BV  220  .K4  igiT 

^1923^^'  Gillian  Wirt,  1837- 

Does  prayer  avail? 


IN    PREPARATION 
BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

WAS  CHRIST  DIVINE? 


The  present  volume,  the  second 
in  the  series  of  which  man's 
TOMORROW  is  the  first,  will 
soon  be  followed  by  a  third  in 
answer  to  the  above  question, 
all  three  closely  conjoined  in 
certain  essential  elements  and 
in  mode  of  treatment,  and 
together  constituting  a  discus- 
sion along  new  lines  of  a  single 
unified,   three-fold  theme. 


SHERMAN,  FRENCH  ^  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS  BOSTON 


FEB  21  191: 
^^^, — 1 


AL  "0^ 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 


BY  y 

WILLIAM  W.   KINSLEY 

Author  of  "  Man's  Tomorrow,"    "  Views  on  Vexed 
Questions,"  "Old  Faiths  and  New  Facts,"  etc. 


BOSTON 

SHERMAN,  FRENCH   ^  COMPANY 

1911 


Copyright,  1911 
Sherman,  French  &>  Company 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 


The  Bible  unmistakably  teaches  that  God  both 
can  and  does  interfere  in  our  behalf,  that  his  in- 
terference often  is  a  direct  result  of  our  asking, 
that  all  reasonable  prayers  offered  in  a  right  spirit 
are  certain  of  favorable  answer.  The  requests 
may  be  as  varied  as  the  healthful  and  intelligent 
longings  of  human  hearts. 

Some  scientists  smile  at  what  they  style  the 
childish  credulity  of  the  Christian's  creed.  Our 
investigations,  say  they,  have  disclosed  a  universal 
reign  of  unchangeable  law,  not  only  In  the  pro- 
duction of  material,  but  even  of  mental  phenom- 
ena. We  have  found  that  within  the  walls  of 
every  particle  of  matter  there  Is  lodged  a  force; 
that  these  forces  are  of  sixty-four  or  more  differ- 
ent kinds,  and  their  differences  In  nature  and  effect 
make  all  the  differences  In  the  substances  about 
us ;  that  they  bear  to  each  other  certain  unalter- 
ably fisied  relations  and  exert  over  each  other  un- 
alterably fixed  influences.  These  relations  we  have 
been  able  by  our  experiments  to  reduce  to  mathe- 
matical formula.  We  have  found  that  these 
forces  never  manifest  themselves  unless  certain 
conditions  are  fulfilled,  and  that,  when  they  are, 
the  forces  invariably  appear  and  act  always  in 
precisely  the  same  way.  It  is  also  claimed,  that, 
as  far  back  as  we  can  peer  into  the  past,  this 

1 


2  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

same  order  has  prevailed ;  that  this  rock-ribbed, 
wave-washed,  verdure-clad,  densely  populated 
earth  of  ours  has  come  up  out  of  chaotic  fire-mist 
by  the  operations  of  none  other  than  these  very 
forces  which  at  the  first  were  hidden  within  it ;  that 
the  earth  has  developed  from  its  unorganized 
primordial  state  into  its  present  complexity  with 
as  regular  gradations  of  growth  as  those  through 
which  the  oak  passes  in  pushing  up  from  out  the 
walls  of  the  acorn  its  sinewy  stem  with  outreaching 
boughs  and  waving  pennons ;  that  the  earth  itself 
is  an  organism  as  truly  as  the  tree,  has  like  com- 
plemental  parts,  has  had  a  germinal  beginning, 
has  been,  and  still  is,  incarnating  under  pre-estab- 
lished laws  of  evolution,  point  by  point,  age  after 
age,  a  certain,  set  ideal  under  the  guidance  of  a 
central  germ-power,  divinely  commissioned  it  may 
be,  but  commissioned  even  as  to  the  details  of  its 
finest  microscopic  work,  untold  millions  of  years 
ago. 

How  idle,  then,  it  is,  they  claim,  for  weak, 
blind  children  of  a  day  to  presume  to  break  in  on 
this  grand  order  of  the  universe !  Go  out  into 
nature,  they  tell  us,  and  you  will  find  that  not  a 
single  one  of  her  laws  is  ever  abrogated,  that  from 
their  control  not  the  least  thing  is  for  an  instant 
released.  Gravity  holds  in  its  grasp  not  only  the 
ponderous  suns  with  their  whirling  satellites,  but 
every  infinitesimal  mote  that  floats  in  the  air. 
The  force  shut  up  within  the  walls  of  an  atom  of 
carbon  is  never  dislodged,  and  never  loses  a  single 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  3 

characteristic.  Manacle  it  with  fetters  of  frost, 
immerse  it  in  the  white  heat  of  a  furnace,  smite 
it  with  a  trip-hammer  on  the  face  of  an  anvil, 
hurl  it  into  the  chemical  embrace  of  an  affinitive 
element,  do  what  jou  will  with  it,  it  will  reappear 
identically  the  same  atom  informed  by  precisely 
the  same  mysterious  force.  This  speck  of  matter 
defies  all  powers  of  earth  or  sky  to  batter  in  its 
walls  and  drive  out  its  occupant.  Every  force, 
the  world  over,  says  that  only  those  who  find  its 
secret  and  meet  the  conditions  can  command  its 
services.  Do  you  want  bread?  Here  are  the 
seed,  the  soil,  the  air,  the  shower,  and  the  sun- 
beam. Matter  and  force  are  at  your  bidding,  but 
their  laws  are  inexorable.  Rays  of  light  will 
travel  ninety-five  millions  of  miles  to  serve  you ; 
the  atmosphere  will  gather  its  clouds  from  the 
ocean  and  float  them  across  a  continent  to  pour 
their  treasures  at  your  feet;  the  mountains  will 
furnish  you  millstones,  and  the  running  brooks 
will  turn  them.  The  forests  that  grew  a  hundred 
thousand  years  ago  you  may  find  packed  away  in 
beds  of  anthracite,  waiting  to  heat  your  ovens  so 
soon  as  your  dough  is  ready  for  the  baking. 
Not  a  force  in  nature  but  will  serve  the  veriest 
outcast  if  he  will  comply  with  the  conditions ;  not 
one,  even  the  humblest,  will  condescend  to  move 
so  much  as  a  hair's-breadth  even  for  the  Czar  of 
all  the  Russias,  unless  he  does.  The  prayerless 
sinner  and  the  praying  saint  meet  here  on  a  com- 
mon level.     It  is  thoroughly  unscientific  and  ab- 


4  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

surd  to  claim  that  the  all-wise  Creator  has  been 
or  can  be  induced  to  change  his  plans  by  the  im- 
portunate pleadings  of  a  little  creature  to  whom 
he  has  given  a  brief  existence  on  one  of  the  ob- 
scure satelhtes  of  one  of  the  million  suns  that 
make  up  one  of  the  nebulous  clusters  with  which 
the  heavens  are  swarming.  What  greater  pre- 
sumption can  be  imagined?  Has  the  Almighty 
so  sadly  blundered  in  his  plans  that  this  little 
creature  can  discover  to  him  their  defects,  and  in- 
duce him  to  change  at  this  late  day,  when  every- 
thing is  so  intimately  interlinked  and  interde- 
pendent that  an  interference  in  one  part  may 
demand  a  reconstruction  throughout  the  whole  in 
order  to  avoid  widespread  confusion  and  ruin? 
Can  God  spare  any  special  thought  now  for  such 
infinitesimal  interests  so  long  as  the  concerns  of 
this  vast  swinging  universe  are  upon  him?  He 
has  laid  down  broad  general  plans.  We  cannot 
reasonably  expect  him  to  listen  to  our  baby  prattle 
about  the  petty  details  of  our  vanishing  lives.  If 
we  thrust  our  hands  into  the  fire,  live  in  a  malari- 
ous district,  are  capsized  in  mid-ocean,  we  must 
suffer  the  natural  consequences,  and  look  about  us, 
as  best  we  can,  for  a  more  congenial  environment. 
Such,  in  brief,  is  the  attitude  assumed  at  the 
present  day  by  a  majority  of  scientists  on  this, 
one  of  the  most  vital  and  perplexing  of  questions. 
This  their  creed  is,  as  I  think  can  be  clearly 
shown,  a  most  mischievous  mixture  of  truth  and 
error.     The   spirit  of   cold  speculative   scepticism 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  6 

pervading  it  is  making  rapid  inroads  upon  all 
classes  in  society.  How  many  even  of  those  who 
have  been  gathered  into  the  fold  of  the  church 
have  fallen  under  the  blighting  spell  of  this  genius 
of  modem  materialistic  thought!  How  many 
prayers  are  simply  the  outbreathings  of  a  rev- 
erential fear,  or  are  a  mere  dead  formalism,  or 
the  results  of  sheer  habit!  How  many  are  little 
else  than  agonized  longings  accompanied  with  no 
joyous  expectation!  How  few,  very  few,  are  of- 
fered with  the  same  confident  assurance  of  results 
as  inspires  the  farmer  when  he  sows  his  fields,  or 
the  telegraphic  operator  when  with  his  key  he 
closes  the  electric  circuit  and  sends  his  messages 
over  the  long  leagues  of  ocean  cable! 

My  pui'pose  at  present  is  to  show :  — 

1st.  That  phenomena  and  the  producing  forces 
with  their  laws  or  modes  of  working,  brought  to 
light  by  scientific  investigations  in  the  fields  of 
physics  and  of  metaphysics,  harmonize  perfectly 
with  the  Scripture  view  of  prayer,  and  abound  in 
suggestions  of  how  God  can  interfere  in  nature 
without  destroying  any  force  or  abrogating  a 
single  law. 

2nd.  That,  as  a  fact,  he  has  thus  actually  in- 
terfered again  and  again. 

3rd.  That  it  is  not  only  not  presumptuous,  but 
most  natural  and  reasonable,  for  us  to  expect  that 
he  will  interfere  for  us,  insignificant  though  we 
may  seem  to  be. 

4th.  That  he  will  interfere  because  we  ask  him. 


6  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

doing  for  us  what  otherwise  he  would  not  have 
done. 

5th.  And  lastly,  that  he  will  not  in  a  single 
instance  withhold  any  real  blessing  which  is  asked 
for  in  the  right  spirit,  and  the  bestowal  of  which 
lies  within  the  compass  of  his  power. 

1st.  How  can  God  answer  prayer  without  de- 
stroying any  force  or  abrogating  any  law?  In 
my  own  experience,  real  light  on  this  point  first 
came  from  the  perusal  of  Dr.  Bushnell's  "  Nature 
and  the  Supernatural."  His  mode  of  treatment 
has  long  since  passed  out  of  memory,  but  a 
thought-germ  was  lodged  in  my  mind  which  has 
since  grown  into  a  deep-rooted  conviction.  As, 
however,  I  have  followed  out  these  lines  of 
thought,  it  has  been  a  constant  source  of  surprise 
that  so  many  of  the  scientists,  while  they  have 
with  tireless  patience  and  keenest  insight  unrav- 
eled much  of  the  infinite  intricacy  that  attends 
the  interplay  of  nature's  forces,  unearthing  so 
many  secrets  and  becoming  masters  in  so  many 
fields  of  inquiry,  have  seemingly  lost  sight  of  that 
most  interesting  and  important  of  all  facts,  that 
everywhere  ample  provision  has  been  made  for  the 
efficient  interference  of  direct  will  power.  One 
would  think  that  they  could  not  have  failed  to 
discover  it,  for  there  is  hardly  a  waking  moment 
in  the  lives  of  any  of  us  when  we  are  not  conscious 
that  we  actually  exercise  volitions,  and  that  these 
volitions  effect  changes,  and  sometimes  most  im- 
portant ones,  in  the  world  about  us.     How  our 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  7. 

wills  are  thus  linked  with  matter,  it  would  prob- 
ably puzzle  the  wisest  to  explain;  but  that  they 
actually  are,  is  a  fact  aU  must  admit.  And  so  I 
surmise  it  is  not  the  fact,  but  the  deep  significance 
of  the  fact,  that  has  so  strangely  escaped  the 
notice  of  so  many  of  our  savants  of  science. 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  F.  R.  S.,  strangely  stands 
almost  alone  among  eminent  scientists  in  open 
recognition  and  advocacy  of  this  directive  power 
of  the  will  over  the  forces  of  nature.  In  his  work 
on  "  Science  and  Immortality  "  he  expresses  the  ut- 
most astonishment  that  Professor  Tyndall  should 
have  overlooked  or  ignored  this  when  he  wrote  in 
his  "  Fragments  of  Science  "  that  "  the  principle  of 
the  conservation  of  energy  teaches  us  that  the 
Italian  wind  gliding  over  the  crest  of  the  Matter- 
horn  is  as  firmly  ruled  as  the  earth  in  its  orbital 
revolution  around  the  sun,  and  that  the  fall  of  its 
vapor  into  clouds  is  exactly  as  much  a  matter  of 
necessity  as  the  return  of  the  seasons.  The  dis- 
persion, therefore,  of  the  slightest  mist  by  the 
special  volition  of  the  Eternal  would  be  as  much 
a  miracle  as  the  rolling  of  the  Rhone  over  the 
Grimsel  precipices,  and  science  asserts  that  with- 
out the  disturbance  of  a  natural  law  quite  as  seri- 
ous as  the  stoppage  of  an  eclipse,  or  the  rolling 
of  the  St.  Lawrence  up  the  Falls  of  Niagara,  no 
act  of  humiliation,  individual  or  national,  could 
call  one  shower  from  heaven  or  deflect  toward  us 
a  single  beam  of  the  sun."  In  this  same  paper, 
in  the  same  connection,  Professor  Tyndall  afiirms, 


8  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

"  we  have  ceased  to  propitiate  the  powers  of 
nature,  as,  in  Protestant  Countries,  at  least,  it  is 
conceded  that  the  age  of  miracles  is  past."  "  The 
idea  of  direct  personal  volition  mixing  itself  in 
the  economy  of  nature  is  retreating  more  and 
more." 

Over  my  body,  in  many  particulars,  my  will 
exercises  direct  control.  I,  for  instance,  order 
my  hand  lifted.  The  mandate  instantly  flashes 
from  the  brain  down  the  motor  nerves  to  the  very 
muscles  in  waiting,  and  their  fibers  at  once  begin 
to  shorten.  I  exercise  this  directive  will  power 
against  the  force  of  gravity,  temporarily  over- 
powering but  not  destroying  it,  for  it  still  con- 
tinues to  pull  the  hand  down  with  the  same  might 
as  before.  This  overbalancing  of  one  force  by 
another  is  taking  place  everywhere  throughout 
nature.  For  illustration,  take  a  tumbler  of  water. 
If  it  were  not  for  the  cohesive  attraction  between 
the  particles  of  glass  being  stronger  than  the 
gravity,  the  sides  would  crumble  into  dust,  and 
sink  with  the  water  to  the  lowest  attainable  level. 
Gravity  has  not  been  destroyed,  but  simply  mas- 
tered by  a  stronger  antagonist.  Remove  a  part 
of  the  heat  from  the  water,  and  it  will  become  a 
crystallized  solid,  showing  that  until  now  the  heat 
force  has  been  holding  the  crystalline  in  check. 
Lower  still  further  the  temperature,  and  the  sides 
of  the  tumbler  will  burst  in  pieces,  the  crystalline 
force  overcoming  the  cohesive.  Raise  the  tem- 
perature, and  the  water  will  change  to  steam,  an(i 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  9 

a  repellence  between  the  particles  will  appear,  the 
heat  driving  them  asunder,  despite  all  that  co- 
hesion and  gravitation  can  do. 

Over  the  world  outside  the  body,  the  control  of 
our  wills,  though  mostly  indirect,  is  equally 
potent,  and  yet  nature  is  not  thrown  into  confu- 
sion, not  a  single  force  destroyed,  not  a  law  abro- 
gated. Our  volitions  are  simply  supernatural, 
not  contranatural.  Our  wills  act  indirectly  by 
complying  with  the  conditions  that  unfetter 
nature's  forces.  The  scientists  have  established 
beyond  question  the  fact  that  there  is  not  a  single 
one  of  these  forces  that  is  not  wholly  inoperative 
unless  certain  conditions  are  fulfilled,  and  just  as 
soon  as  they  are,  the  force  begins  to  work  its 
wonders.  Scientists  have  even  gone  further,  dis- 
covering in  very  many  instances  precisely  what 
those  conditions  are,  and  thus  placed  it  within  our 
reach  to  utilize  those  forces  in  the  arts  of  life. 

Back  of  our  will  power,  acting  as  its  guide, 
there  now  exists,  thanks  to  these  explorers,  a  well- 
informed  intelligence,  and  we  have  become  mas- 
ters of  nature  by  simply  understanding  and  com- 
plying with  her  laws.  For  instance,  we  want 
homes  for  ourselves  and  our  little  ones,  and  so 
we  cast  about  and  find  abundance  of  crude  ma- 
terial,— sand  and  clay,  metal  and  slate,  rock  and 
standing  trees  and  running  water.  Our  wills  de- 
cree that  these  shall  be  transformed  into  cemented 
walls  of  brick  and  stone,  framed  timbers,  tessel- 
lated floors,  frescoed  ceilings,  plate-glass  windows, 


10  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

roofs  and  mantels,  furnaces  and  swinging  doors, 
and  step  by  step,  under  the  directive  power  of  the 
mind,  the  wondrous  change  is  wrought.  We  even 
make  our  wills  felt  in  the  domains  of  vegetable 
and  animal  life,  improving  old  varieties  and  de- 
veloping new  ones  among  fruits  and  flowers  and 
domesticated  animals,  enriching  and  seeding  our 
soils,  and  multiplying  our  flocks  and  herds  to  meet 
our  ever-growing  wants. 

The  processes  by  which  our  wills  enforce  their 
decrees  may  be  a  little  tedious,  but  the  ends  are 
reached,  the  course  of  nature  is  seriously  broken 
in  upon,  results  attained  which  otherwise  nature 
never  would  have  attempted,  yet  no  disorder  has 
anywhere  ensued.  What  marvelous  eff'ects  have 
been  produced  by  this  intelligent  will  power  of 
man,  cunningly  directing  to  its  own  uses  the  ever- 
waiting  elemental  and  vital  forces !  How  many 
rivers  have  been  bridged,  beds  of  rivers  shifted  or 
tunneled,  mountains  discrowned  or  their  rocky 
centers  pierced  to  open  highways  for  the  world's 
commerce!  The  very  lightnings  have  been  tamed 
into  flying  Mercurys  to  carry  the  thought-mes- 
sages of  this  busy-brained  master,  the  oceans 
whitened  with  his  sail,  the  continents  covered  with 
his  networks  of  railways  and  canals,  barren  wastes 
changed  into  vineyards  and  palm-groves  and 
orange-orchards,  the  unshapely  quarries  of  gran- 
ite and  of  marble  transformed  into  palaces  and 
statue-crowned  temples  to  body  forth  his  ripest 
culture  and  most  holy  thought. 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  11 

The  influence  of  the  human  will  has  had  even 
a  wider  circuit  assigned  it.  Many  of  us  have 
known  instances  of  weak  wills  being  overawed  by 
stronger  ones,  and  the  domination  being  so  abso- 
lute as  for  the  time  being  to  actually  blot  out 
every  distinctive  trace  of  personality  and  suspend 
individual  responsibility.  Not  one  of  us  but  has 
felt,  time  and  again,  the  indirect  power  of  an- 
other's will  reaching  us  through  channels  of  argu- 
ment, persuasive  kindling  of  the  fancy,  eloquent 
appeal,  shrewd  suggestion,  or  show  of  apprecia- 
tive sympathy.  There  are  a  thousand  avenues  to 
the  heart,  a  thousand  ways  to  arouse  the  con- 
science, inflame  passion,  fill  the  chambers  of  the 
soul  with  dread  alarms,  and  these  are  discovered 
and  utilized  by  positive  and  aggressive  souls 
athirst  for  wealth,  power,  or  prestige.  Society 
has  its  born  leaders.  Individuality  and  responsi- 
ble free  choice  are  with  the  vast  majority  still 
retained,  but  it  is  through  these  multiform  influ- 
ences of  personal  character  that  the  life  of  the 
world's  subtile  social  organism  is,  under  pre-estab- 
lished spiritual  laws,  regulated  and  maintained. 

Until  recent  years  this  was  the  utmost  limit  of 
conception  entertained  by  the  most  advanced  in- 
vestigators, of  the  outreaching  of  our  spiritual 
powers, — that  of  a  direct  control  over  the  muscu- 
lar tissues  of  the  body  and  of  an  indirect  over 
the  physical  forces  in  the  world  outside.  But  new 
light  has  come.  It  has  been  discovered  that  the 
will  can  make  its  direct  mandates  felt  even  beyond 


12  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

the  boundaries  of  the  body  and  to  a  most  astonish- 
ing extent.  How  this  is  done  is  still  as  profound 
a  mystery  as  how  at  the  first  it  causes  the  muscles 
to  contract,  but  the  fact  has,  by  painstaking  care 
on  the  part  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
in  guarding  against  deception  or  mistake,  been 
placed  at  last  beyond  all  controversy.  Ponderous 
bodies  have  repeatedly  been  lifted  and  moved  about 
by  it  and  wonderful  feats  of  skill  performed  with- 
out any  discoverable  physical  contact,  purely 
through  some  occult  psychic  force.  Scientists  at 
the  first  stoutly  discredited  the  alleged  phenom- 
ena, being  so  wholly  out  of  the  ordinary  and  the 
probable,  and  so  often  mixed  with  fraud,  but  be- 
ing persistently  repeated  under  the  strictest  safe- 
guards they  have  now  quite  generally  pronounced 
them  genuine,  though  yet  widely  differing  in 
their  interpretations.  Flammarion,  the  celebrated 
French  astronomer,  unhesitatingly  asserts  that  the 
phenomenon  of  levitation  has  been  absolutely 
proved,  though  he  cannot  explain  it.  Careful  ex- 
periments in  his  own  house,  under  his  own  eye, 
under  his  own  prescribed  conditions,  have  proved 
it.  More  astounding  still,  it  has  been  equally 
well  established  that  strong  personal  magnetic  cur- 
rents flow  out  from  us,  frequently  over  wide 
spaces,  impressing,  telepathically,  the  subtile 
power  of  our  presence  on  each  other  beyond  the 
ken  and  without  the  aid  of  any  of  our  bodily 
senses, — soul  seemingly  touching  soul  even  when 
continents   intervene.     Sir  Oliver  Lodge,   Camille 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  13 

Flamraarion,  F.  W.  H.  Myers  and  many  others 
of  international  fame  among  scientists  have,  with- 
out reservation,  declared  this  to  have  been  defi- 
nitely established.  Gifts,  both  of  them,  certainly 
ours,  and  of  priceless  value,  though  placed,  as  yet, 
tantalizingly  just  beyond  our  reach  to  utilize  here 
and  now,  gifts  held  in  reser\'e  seemingly  as  a 
promise  and  a  prophecy  of  some  freer,  larger  life 
beyond. 

Thus  we  see  that  to  the  touch  of  the  human 
will  all  nature  is  plastic,  that  every  facility  has 
seemingly  been  provided  for  its  efficient  interfer- 
ence. Think  you  that,  in  a  world  where  so  many 
doors  have  been  so  invitingly  left  open  for  the 
will  of  the  creature  to  enter  and  occupy,  the  will 
of  the  Creator  has  been  studiously  excluded? 
Can  science,  which  has  so  conclusively  proved  the 
one,  consistently  deny  the  other?  Is  it  not  rather 
forced  to  assert  that,  so  far  as  God's  will  has 
greater  innate  power  and  is  guided  by  a  pro- 
founder  knowledge,  it  has  proportionately  greater 
facilities  for  effecting  its  purposes  and,  at  the 
same  time,  leaving  every  force  and  law,  both  in 
the  material  and  mental  kingdoms,  equally  undis- 
turbed ? 

Before  the  birth  of  science  a  radical  misconcep- 
tion of  the  true  nature  of  miracles  was  entertained, 
and  seems  still  very  generally  to  prevail,  and  has 
largely  provoked  the  attacks  made  on  the  Bible 
record.  There  is  little  doubt  that  scattered 
through  the  Bible  there  is  much  of  allegory  and 


14  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

legend,  of  tribal  tradition,  myth  and  folk-lore,  of 
apologue,  parable  and  Oriental  poetic  extrava- 
ganza, and  yet  while  it  is  not  my  present  purpose 
to  sift  out  the  wild  growths  of  the  imagination 
from  the  plain,  sober  facts  of  history,  or  to  stand 
sponsor  for  all,  or  any,  of  the  Instances  of  miracle- 
working  recorded  in  its  pages,  it  is  my  purpose 
to  show  how  it  was  possible  for  God,  if  he  so 
chose  for  reasons  which  seemed  good  to  him,  to 
directly  and  effectively  interfere  in  many  such  like 
ways  as  those  narrated,  in  behalf  of  his  helpless 
and  suffering  children,  without  destroying  any 
force,  setting  aside  any  law,  or  disturbing  in  any 
way  the  predetermined  plan  of  his  creation.  The 
question  of  the  nature  and  degree  of  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Scriptures,  and  of  the  extent  of  their 
inerrancy,  is  wholly  beside  the  present  discussion. 
Its  settlement  is  not  essential  to  it,  and  need  not 
now  be  considered. 

Precisely  how  God's  will  sets  free,  or  holds  in 
check,  nature's  forces  is  no  more  of  a  mystery 
than  how  our  own  wills  come  Into  touch  with,  and 
dominate  over  them.  There  is  no  more  of  a  devi- 
ation from  nature's  laws  in  the  one  case  than  in 
the  other.  Both  volitions  are,  as  far  as  we  can 
discover,  essentially  the  same.  If  the  scientist 
can  by  his  own  will  put  out  his  hand  and  stop  the 
spinning  of  a  top,  what  reason  has  he  for  thinking 
that  God's  will  cannot  check  the  whirling  of  a 
world.  Has  he  any  evidence  that  his  will  Is  more 
closely  linked  with  matter  than  God's.?     With  our 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  15 

yet  extremely  meagre  knowledge  of  nature's  laws 
and  forces  we  have  very  inadequate  means  of  de- 
termining precisely  what  is  beyond  the  ready 
reach  of  a  will  so  masterful  and  so  wise  as  we  are 
warranted  in  believing  God's  to  be. 

The  turning  of  water  to  wine  and  the  feeding 
of  five  thousand  with  the  five  loaves  and  few  fishes, 
though  they  involve  something  more  than  simply 
the  overmastering  of  one  force  by  another,  and 
are  at  first  more  difficult  of  apprehension  and  be- 
lief, and  lie  more  exposed  to  the  adverse  criticism 
of  scientists,  yet,  after  a  careful  scrutiny,  will 
be  found,  after  all,  remarkably  analogous  in  many 
respects  to  achievements  of  the  human  will,  and  no 
more  contranatural,  or  improbable,  or  wrapped  in 
a  profounder  mystery.  There  is  no  necessity  for 
thinking  that  in  these  or  kindred  acts  any  new 
matter  or  force  was  brought  into  existence.  The 
wine  and  the  miraculously  provided  cakes  and 
fishes  differed  in  no  respect  in  their  elemental 
atoms,  or  in  the  combinations  of  these  atoms,  from 
products  which  nature,  assisted  and  guided  by 
man,  had  for  centuries  before  been  manufactur- 
ing. There  was  no  call  for  any  new  matter,  as 
it  was  already  at  hand  in  vast  abundance.  Chris- 
tians need  not  claim  this.  Indeed,  neither  need 
they  claim  that,  when,  as  it  is  recorded,  in  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth, 
he  brought  forth  something  out  of  nothing,  as 
too  many  unthinkingly  believe.  Scientists  may 
well     pronounce     such     a     notion     absurd.     An 


16  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

achievement  like  that  would  transcend  even  divine 
power,  for  it  involves  a  contradiction,  an  impossi- 
bility. Something  cannot  come  out  of  nothing. 
It  is  nowhere  revealed  that  there  ever  was  a  time 
when  matter  did  not  exist.  The  beginning  spoken 
of  in  Genesis  need  have  reference  only  to  the 
present  order  of  things,  the  present  processes  of 
evolution  through  which  the  burning  and  non- 
burning  balls  of  matter  have  been  made  to  people 
space.  Although  this  history  may  reach  back  over 
what  to  us  are  inconceivable  periods,  yet  there 
unquestionably  was  a  time  when  not  a  single  sun 
or  satellite  anywhere  existed,  when  matter  must 
have  been  in  some  other  radically  different  form. 
Further  than  this  we  need  not  go.  If  it  was  not 
originally  a  part  of  God,  and  is  not  now  to  be 
considered  as  an  emanation  from  him,  it  must  In 
our  thought  take  rank  as  an  equally  self-existent 
and  eternal  entity.  The  fact  is,  the  more  pro- 
longed and  profound  our  study  Into  Its  nature, 
the  more  impenetrable  appears  the  mystery  that 
shrouds  it,  for  at  first  we  can  little  realize  that  the 
substance  we  see  and  taste  and  handle  is  revealed  to 
us  simply  by  the  eflPect  produced  upon  our  sense- 
nerves  by  forces  that  lie  hidden  behind  It,  so  that 
we,  when  further  advanced  in  our  reflections,  are 
led  to  query  whether,  after  all,  it  is  not  the  pres- 
ence of  force  that  Is  revealed  to  our  conscious- 
ness rather  than  that  of  matter  as  the  medium  of 
force,  and  whether  it  is  not  of  the  existence  simply 
of  force  that  we  have  any  certain  knowledge. 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  IT 

As  I  have  said,  we  need  not  Infer  that  in  these 
miracle-workings  any  new  substance  was  brought 
into  being,  but  only  new  methods  adopted,  or 
hitherto  unused  forces  liberated,  or  greater  direct 
power  employed  by  a  sovereign  will  in  carrying 
out  its  decrees.  The  human  will  had  before  this 
accomplishment  the  same  ends  in  other  ways,  for 
how  else  can  we  explain  the  presence  of  the  wine 
already  drunk  at  the  wedding  feast,  or  the  bread 
and  fish  in  the  baskets  of  Christ's  disciples  before 
he  miraculously  multiplied  them?  But  the  hu- 
man will  had  been  compelled  to  resort  to  tedious 
and,  for  the  most  part,  indirect  methods  to  ac- 
complish what  the  Divine  will  wrought  without 
delay,  and  apparently  by  direct  impressment.  I 
say  "  apparently,"  for  it  is  quite  possible  that 
the  methods  employed  were  still  indirect,  though 
not  accompanied  with  any  noticeable  delay.  We 
ourselves  are  continually  shortening  the  processes 
we  employ  in  carrying  out  our  purposes.  By  a 
more  perfect  knowledge  of  nature's  laws  we  be- 
come more  complete  masters  of  her  forces.  What 
giant  strides  have  we  already  made  in  this  direc- 
tion, especially  during  the  nineteenth  century! 
It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  the  nature  and  ex- 
tent of  our  recent  victories  over  matter.  With 
what  blank  amazement  would  Washington  and  his 
companions  be  filled  were  they  now,  without  know- 
ing what  had  taken  place,  to  return  to  the  coun- 
try they  fought  to  save !  For  since  Washington 
closed   his    eyes    to    earth,    there    have    come    the 


18  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

steamship,  the  locomotive,  the  wire  strung  and  the 
wireless  telegraph,  the  telephone,  the  phonograph, 
the  flying  machine  and  thousands  of  shortening 
processes.  In  his  day,  yes,  and  forty  years  later, 
to  cross  the  American  continent  was  a  task  of 
many  weary  months.  Now  we  make  the  trip  in 
less  than  a  week.  The  news  of  Waterloo  was 
three  days  reaching  England,  but  the  tidings  of 
the  last  bombardment  of  Alexandria,  though  half- 
way round  the  globe,  took  only  as  many  minutes. 
The  thunder  of  the  first  gun  had  hardly  died  away 
along  the  banks  of  the  Nile  before  the  air  was 
throbbing  with  its  echo  on  the  banks  of  the 
Thames.  We  have  also  of  late,  through  our 
telephones,  succeeded  in  holding  easy  converse 
with  each  other,  though  separated  by  leagues  of 
distance,  even  in  actually  distinguishing  the  pe- 
culiar intonations  of  each  other's  voices.  At  what 
time  these  discoveries  of  new  forces  and  how  to 
unfetter  them  shall  reach  their  limit,  who  would 
be  bold  enough  to  predict?  and  yet  not  until 
science  has  won  its  final  triumph  over  nature 
should  devotees  of  science  be  unwilling  to  con- 
cede that  it  is  clearly  possible  that  Bible  miracles 
were  the  work  of  Nature's  forces  simply  guided 
by  a  will  thoroughly  conversant  with  Nature's 
laws,  which  were  within  the  reach  of  the  directive 
power  of  the  will  of  a  man  if  illumined  by  the  in- 
sight of  a  God.  But  even  if  these  miracles  were 
performed  by  direct  will-power,  still  we  can  point 
to   constantly    recurring   instances   in   which  pre- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  19 

cisely  analogous  effects  are  produced  both  in  the 
vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms,  as  well  as  in  the 
higher  realm  of  the  human  will.  Scientific 
treatises  call  our  attention  not  only  to  an  inorganic, 
but  also  to  an  organic,  chemistry,  and  assure  us 
that  the  vital  forces,  working  through  complex 
animal  and  vegetable  organisms,  effect  combina- 
tions of  elements  which  outside  of  their  labora- 
tories or  the  laboratories  of  man  are  never  pro- 
duced, and  are  marked  by  extreme  instability, 
readily  decomposing  under  the  influence  of  heat  or 
fermentation,  so  soon  as  their  influence  is  with- 
drawn. Those  mysterious  forces  lodged  inside  the 
walls  of  seeds  prove  themselves  the  masters  of  other 
forces  equally  mysterious  lodged  inside  the  walls 
of  atoms.  Carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen  and  nitro- 
gen never  would  have  congregated  into  such 
chemical  groups,  or  arranged  themselves  along 
such  lines  of  symmetry^,  or  climbed  to  such  dizzy 
heights,  directly  against  the  steady  pull  of  grav- 
ity, were  they  not  working  under  compulsion ;  and 
so  soon  as  they  escape  from  the  thrall  of  their 
taskmasters,  their  old  individuality  comes  back  to 
them,  their  old  modes  of  combining,  their  old 
circles  of  association  return,  and  the  unstable 
organic  compounds  are  torn  down  into  the  more 
stable,  original,  inorganic  ones.  Here  we  witness 
one  great  class  of  Nature's  forces  —  the  atomic 
—  lorded  over  for  a  time  by  another  and  superior 
class.  As  we  are  daily  witnesses  of  these  facts, 
we  never  think  of  questioning  them. 


20  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

Further  than  that,  we  see  the  products  of  vege- 
tive-vital  forces  taken  possession  of  by  animal- 
vital,  and  grouped  into  still  more  strange  and 
higher  compounds,  and  the  chemic  compelled  to 
play  a  part  still  more  foreign  to  their  first  estate. 
We  know  that  this,  too,  is  a  case  of  compulsion, 
for  the  very  moment  vitality  ceases,  disintegra- 
tion begins.  These  nitrogenous  combinations  are 
the  very  embodiment  of  instability. 

We  are  daily  witnesses  of  more  startling  won- 
ders still.  They  form  part  of  our  personal  ex- 
periences. We  find  that  we  can  by  sheer  will- 
power compel  even  these  higher  forces  of  animal 
vitality,  and  through  them  the  lower,  to  do  our 
bidding.  The  late  Dr.  Carpenter,  the  foremost 
physiologist  of  his  day,  called  especial  attention 
to  this  fact,  asserting  that  thus  we  can  greatly 
add  to  the  acuteness  of  any  of  our  bodily  senses, 
can  actually  compel  the  nourishing  blood  to  flow 
to  any  part  of  the  system  and  infuse  new  vigor. 
The  experiences  of  artisans  and  artists,  astron- 
omers and  microscopists,  experts  and  specialists 
in  every  class  of  work,  deaf-mutes  and  the  blind, 
abundantly  confirm  this.  There  are  few  of  us 
who  have  not  found  by  actual  experience  that  by 
calling  up  certain  thoughts  we  can  turn  the  cheek 
pale  or  crimson  it  with  blushes,  flood  the  eyes  with 
tears  or  make  them  merrily  twinkle  or  flash  with 
angry  fire,  cause  the  heart  to  violently  throb  or 
intermit  its  beats,  throw  the  blood  to  the  brain, 
make  the  knees  quake,  the  skin  perspire,  the  whole 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  21 

body  tremble  with  intensity  of  emotion.  The 
control  which  persons  of  cultivated  histrionic 
powers  have  over  the  body  to  make  it  the  vehicle  of 
thought  can  be  appreciated  only  by  those  who 
have  witnessed  the  masters  as  they  have  entranced 
their  audiences,  and  who  have  themselves  been 
thrilled  and  spirit-bound  under  the  spell  of  their 
enchantments. 

If  the  vegetative  forces  can  thus  dominate 
over  the  atomic,  the  animal  over  the  vegetative, 
and  the  will  of  man  over  all,  what  valid  objection 
can  science  urge  to  the  Christian's  creed  that 
God's  will  can  by  direct  impressment  effect  com- 
binations in  the  elements  which  Nature's  forces 
indirectly  and  uncompelled  bring  about  by  slower 
processes  according  to  the  terms  of  their  divine 
commission?  Why  may  not  God's  will  have  as 
immediate  and  complete  a  sovereignty  over  the 
earth  or  the  universe,  as  we  over  these  complicate 
bodies  of  ours,  which  our  spirits  permeate  through 
and  through  by  their  informing  presence?  And 
why  may  not  his  sovereignty  be  inconceivably 
more  immediate  and  complete,  and  still  retain  in 
its  relationship  its  marked  analogy  to  the  char- 
acteristics of  force  which  science  has  herself  re- 
corded? Why  may  not  the  Divine  will  not  only 
make  bread,  wine,  and  fish  directly  out  of  the  sur- 
rounding elements,  but  heal  lepers,  restore  the 
blind,  or  even  raise  the  dead,  and  still  do  no  more 
violence  to  Nature's  systems  of  law  than  the  hu- 
man will  is  doing  every  day?     There  are  multi- 


22  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

tudes  of  well-authenticated  instances  in  which 
persons  have  by  simple  determination  checked  for 
considerable  periods  the  inroads  of  disease  and 
even  permanently  broken  its  power.  So  startling 
have  been  the  effects  of  the  will  and  of  the  imagi- 
nation over  these  susceptible  bodily  organisms 
various  cults  have  come  to  the  front  of  late  and 
gained  great  prominence  numbering  their  adher- 
ents by  the  thousands  who,  afflicted  with  certain 
functional  nervous  disorders,  have  without  the  use 
of  drugs  genuinely  and  permanently  regained 
their  lost  health. 

Though  they  are  widely  apart  in  many  of 
their  tenets,  one  embracing  negations  which  im- 
press every  one  outside  their  circle  as  the  very 
height  of  absurdity,  denying  alike  the  existence  of 
matter,  pain,  disease  and  death,  all  agree  in  the 
curative  force  of  faith,  and  all  gain  access  through 
the  selfsame  charm  of  mental  suggestion  to  that 
most  marvelously  gifted,  most  mysteriously  sub- 
merged part  of  the  soul,  the  subconscious  self,  to 
the  nature  and  therapeutic,  creative  and  concep- 
tive  powers  of  which  I  will  hereafter  call  special 
attention. 

It  was  the  aid  of  this  very  same  sub-conscious 
self  Christ  is  supposed  to  have  invoked  in  per- 
forming many  of  his  acts  of  healing,  the  exer- 
cise of  faith  being  strictly  enjoined,  while  in  many 
he  undoubtedly  transcended  human  achievement, 
though  in  no  single  instance  are  we  necessitated 
to  believe  that  he  violated  any  law,  destroyed  any 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  23 

force,  or  in  the  least  infringed  upon  the  universal 
order. 

Psychic  cures,  under  varying  forms  and  names 
can  be  traced  back  to  the  very  dawn  of  history. 
Five  hundred  years  before  Christ  at  the  ancient 
Greek  Shrine  at  Epidaurus,  multitudes  of  sick 
were  restored  without  medical  assistance  through 
what  was  claimed  to  be  the  miracle-working  of 
the  demigod  JEsculapius.  The  temple-sleep  en- 
joined closely  resembled  the  hypnotic  trance  of 
to-day,  and  the  same  mental  suggestion  was 
drafted  into  service.  Priests  in  the  early  time 
claimed  the  sole  prerogative  of  healing  and  a 
kindled  faith  was  their  prime  curative  agency. 
Only  during  the  last  three  or  four  centuries  have 
the  study  of  anatomy,  the  careful  diagnosis  of 
disease  and  medical  treatment  been  in  vogue. 

The  Puritans  rightly  claimed  that  solely  by  the 
King's  touch,  though  they  could  not  explain  how, 
cures  were  wrought  in  cases  of  scrofula. 
Through  the  middle  ages  and  down  even  to  our 
own  time  in  Catholic  countries,  the  common  people, 
being  possessed  of  a  seemingly  inexhaustible  su- 
perstition and  credulity,  have  reverenced  without 
reserve  relics  however  absurd  and  spurious,  if 
vouched  for  and  blessed  by  the  priests,  and  by  the 
exercise  of  this  unwavering  faith  have  actually 
been  cured  of  many  of  their  diseases. 

Pilgrimages  to  cathedrals  and  holy  shrines  have 
not  been  without  avail.  The  famous  shrines  of 
the   Virgin   at   Lourdes   in   France   and   of   Saint 


U  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

Anne  de  Beaupre  at  Quebec,  and  the  cathedral 
of  Saint  Paul  and  Saint  Helen  at  Treves  in 
Prussia,  where  is  still  exhibited  what  is  claimed  to 
be  the  seamless  coat  of  Christ,  and  many  other 
consecrated  places  in  different  countries,  are 
thronged  with  eagerly  expectant  and  rejoicing 
multitudes  even  now,  on  whom  the  miracle  of  heal- 
ing either  is  about  to  be,  or  has  already  been, 
marvelously  wrought. 

Over  three  hundred  thousand  still  visit  Lourdes 
every  year.  These  cases  of  cure  are  attested  by 
the  highest  medical  authorities,  showing  that  faith 
even  though  ignorantly  based  on  lies  and  ab- 
surdities, does  wondrously  modify  the  vital  func- 
tions of  these  nerve-thrilled  bodies  of  ours. 

Liberal,  progressive  members  of  the  medical 
profession  are  at  last  questioning  whether  drugs 
and  other  external  agencies  do  much  more  in  many 
cases  than  remove  the  obstructions  that  clog  the 
free  play  of  the  vital  forces  within,  and  in  their 
treatment  of  functional  diseases  of  obscure  nerv- 
ous origin,  the  fruit,  many  if  not  most  of  them 
of  disorganizing  thoughts  that  have  been  suf- 
fered to  find  lodgment,  they  are  wisely  making 
overtures  to  modern  psychotherapy  as  a  helpful 
ally. 

Some  writers  and  thinkers  have  doubtless  over- 
rated the  curative  energy  of  this  subconscious 
self,  but  they  certainly  have  made  no  mistake, 
except  in  the  extent  to  which  such  cures  can  be 
carried.     Sudden    fright,    worriment    in    financial 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  25 

difficulties,  brooding  over  loss  of  friends,  anger, 
jealousy,  remorse,  chagrin,  discouragement,  alien- 
ation, loneliness  and  longing, —  all  have  their 
depressing  effect  on  the  body,  closing  up  the  chan- 
nels, causing  accumulation  of  bile  in  the  blood, 
hindering  the  normal  workings  of  the  liver,  and 
obstructing  in  various  ways  the  free  flow  of  the 
life  forces,  and  if  not  checked  in  time  will  lead 
to  serious  illness,  if  not  to  positive  brain-lesion. 
Anger  in  a  mother  has  been  known  to  poison  a 
nursing  child,  violent  paroxysms  of  rage  or  fright 
to  cause  jaundice  and  apoplexy.  The  ex- 
perience of  Stanley,  during  his  search  for  Liv- 
ingston through  the  Dark  Continent  is  familiar 
to  all,  how  during  the  hours  of  a  single  night 
agonizing  thoughts  turned  his  hair  as  white  as 
enow. 

A  noted  American  writer  and  medical  graduate 
says,  "  Every  thought  tends  to  reproduce  itself, 
and  ghastly  mental  pictures  of  disease,  sensuality 
and  vice  of  all  sorts,  produce  scrofula  and  leprosy 
in  the  soul  which  reproduces  them  in  the  body. 
Anger  changes  the  chemical  properties  of  the 
saliva  to  a  poison  dangerous  to  life.  It  is  well 
known  that  sudden  and  violent  emotions  have  not 
only  weakened  the  heart  in  a  few  hours  but  have 
caused  death  and  insanity.  It  has  been  discovered 
by  scientists  that  there  is  a  chemical  difference 
between  that  sudden,  cold  exudation  of  a  person 
under  a  deep  sense  of  guilt  and  the  ordinary 
perspiration ;  and  the  state  of  the  mind  can  some- 


26  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

times  be  determined  by  chemical  analysis  of  the 
perspiration  of  a  criminal  which,  when  brought 
into  contact  with  selenic  acid  produces  a  distinc- 
tive pink  color." 

Stigmatization,  that  strange  experience  whose 
recurrence  during  several  of  the  past  centuries  is 
a  matter  of  record,  at  first  thought  to  be  miracu- 
lous as  a  special  mark  of  Divine  favor  for  ex- 
ceptional saintliness,  but  now  diagnosed  by  cold 
medical  science  as  a  neurotic  phenomenon  of 
hysteria,  most  strikingly  illustrates  the  power  of 
thought  on  the  human  body.  There  have  been 
two  noted  cases  of  it  in  recent  years.  One,  the 
case  of  Louise  Lateau  of  Belgium  who  died  1883. 
On  a  Friday  following  recovery  from  a  severe 
illness  this  woman  discovered  blood  flowing  from 
her  side;  on  the  next  Friday,  from  her  feet;  on 
the  next  from  her  back  and  palms  of  her  hands; 
in  four  weeks,  marks  of  thorns  on  her  forehead 
moist  with  blood.  She  had  fits  of  ecstasy  and 
during  vision  enacted  the  events  of  the  Passion, 
extending  her  limbs  in  the  form  of  a  Cross. 

Another  similar  case  occurred  in  America  In 
1891,  that  of  a  Mrs.  Stuckenborg.  Besides  the 
above  phenomena,  a  Cross  appeared  in  her  fore- 
head, also  on  her  chest,  and  the  outlines  of  a 
heart  and  the  letters  I.  H.  S.  on  her  right  shoul- 
der. 

These  cases  were  thoroughly  investigated  by 
professional  and  scientific  men  and  pronounced  to 
be  undeniably  genuine.     Hawthorne  made  telling 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  27 

use  of  this  class  of  phenomena  when  he  wrote  his 
"  Scarlet  Letter." 

Glad  surprise,  large  and  unlooked-for  success, 
the  return  of  long  absent  loved  ones,  their  rescue 
from  danger  or  illness,  appreciative  sympathetic 
recognition  of  merit,  fruition  of  long-deferred 
hopes,  the  stir  of  patriotic  or  religious  fervor, 
—  all  have  their  medicinal  influence,  their  exhilara- 
ting, uplifting  power.  Thoughts  sudden  and 
startling  have  often  brought  sickness  or  banished 
it,  brought  death  even  in  the  midst  of  healthful 
life,  or  lengthened  life's  lease  for  those  apparently 
passing  within  the  shadow.  If  impalpable 
thought  is  clothed  with  such  recuperative  and 
destructive  power,  and  if  between  the  Creator  and 
his  creatures  there  are  open  avenues  of  communi- 
cation as  there  evidently  must  be,  avenues  more 
open  and  numerous  than  between  man  and  man, 
what  valid  objection  can  be  urged  to  the  belief 
that  God,  with  his  infinitude  of  knowledge  of  the 
structure  of  the  human  frame  and  the  laws  regu- 
lating its  processes,  and  with  his  intimate  and 
accurate  acquaintance  with  its  ever-varying  en- 
vironment, can  by  turning  the  currents  of  thought 
by  means  of  timely  suggestions,  by  firing  the 
fancy,  rousing  the  conscience,  raising  the  hope, 
occasioning  and  confirming  the  purpose,  and,  by 
the  even  more  mighty  magnetism  of  such  posi- 
tive and  such  sympathetic  personality  as  his  must 
be,  summon  health  or  sickness,  life  or  death,  when 
and  where  he  chooses? 


28  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

Thus  the  Christian's  creed  that  God  can  an- 
swer prayer  if  he  so  desires,  if  in  his  wisdom  it 
seems  best,  that  there  are  multitudinous  ways  in 
which  he  may  indirectly  or  directly  carry  out 
the  mandates  of  his  will  without  destroying  any 
force  or  abrogating  any  law,  finds  in  the  dis- 
coveries of  modern  science  most  abundant  con- 
firmatory and  illustrative  facts.  It  is  only  in 
the  ill-founded  theories  and  misinterpretations  of 
some  of  the  devotees  of  science  that  its  claims 
have  been  denied.  Christianity  will  some  day 
summon  science  to  the  bar  of  the  world's  judg- 
ment as  her  strongest  witness  and  most  helpful 
ally. 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 


II 

But,  query  our  doubting  Thomases,  suppose 
you  can  thus  show  that  scientific  discoveries  war- 
rant a  behef  in  the  possibihty  of  God's  effectively 
interfering  in  the  course  of  nature  and  in  the 
affairs  of  men,  have  they  not  also  suggested  and 
finally  confirmed  the  opinion  that,  in  point  of  fact, 
he  never  has;  that,  from  the  very  first,  matter 
contained  the  promise  and  the  potency  of  all  life; 
that  the  world  is  simply  an  immense  organism 
which  has  reached  its  present  complex  perfect- 
ness  through  inherent  forces  working  under  fixed 
laws  of  evolution;  that  the  stages  of  its  growth 
have  been  as  regular  and  predetermined  as  those 
of  a  tree;  that  its  social  amenities,  its  arts  and 
literatures,  its  ripened  civilizations,  have  finally 
evolved  out  of  the  original  amorphic  fire-mist 
through  precisely  the  same  regular  gradations  of 
growth  as  those  out  of  which  the  rich  grape- 
cluster  or  the  golden-sphered  russet  has  come  to 
crown  the  long  energizings  of  the  germ-force  that 
at  the  first  lay  hidden  within  the  walls  of  the  seed? 
We  return  to  this  query  ci  most  decided  negative 
answer,  and  will  endeavor  to  establish,  as  the 
second  point  in  our  present  argument,  that  God 
has  actually  interfered  again  and  again;  that  his 
interferences  have  not  been  confined  to  any  one 
age,  but  have  been  present  in  all  ages;  that  his 
9.9 


30  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

will,  by  its  creating  and  modifying  power,  has 
extended  to  all  classes  of  phenomena;  that  his 
mandates  are  still  being  issued;  and  that  their 
results,  as  asserted  by  recognized  leaders  in  phi- 
losophy and  in  science,  are  present  with  us  to-day. 

We  fully  appreciate  the  array  of  learning  we 
are  called  to  confront  in  maintaining  this  posi- 
tion. 

La  Place,  a  supposed  tower  of  strength  in 
mathematical  astronomy,  seizing  upon  the  sug- 
gestions of  Sir  William  Herschel,  propounded 
what  is  now  known  as  the  Nebular  Hypothesis. 
In  this  he  claims  it  possible  that  the  worlds  origi- 
nated in  a  vastly  diffused  homogeneous  fire-mist, 
which,  on  cooling  and  condensing  into  irregular 
flocculi,  were  thus  thrown  into  a  spiral  motion  until 
the  whole  mass  was  finally  in  a  whirl;  that  from 
this  mass  rings  were  successively  disengaged  and 
condensed  about  nuclei  into  suns  from  which  rings 
were  again  broken  and  condensed  into  planets, 
and  from  these  still  other  rings  were  formed  into 
moons.  Following  out  this  vast  conception,  and 
harmonizing  with  it,  other  scientists  equally  emi- 
nent have  further  asserted  that  out  from  this  mat- 
ter thus  separated,  solidified  and  grouped  into 
systems  there  have  been  evolved  by  natural  laws 
through  successive  grades  of  progression  not  only 
all  the  varient  three  score  and  more  elemental 
atoms  of  the  inorganic  world,  but  also  all  the 
multiform  manifestations  of  vegetable  and  animal 
life, —  tracing  human  genealogy  back  to  infusoria 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  31 

and  claiming  that  these  at  the  first  were  but  the 
spontaneous  product  of  chemical  action,  molec- 
ular force  being  thus  declared  sufficient  to  account 
for  the  evolution  of  a  molten  mass  into  a  peopled 
world. 

Herbert  Spencer  in  his  "  First  Principles  "  ex- 
pressly states  that  "  those  modes  of  the  unknow- 
able which  we  call  motion,  light,  heat  and  chemical 
affinity  are  alike  transformable  into  each  other  and 
into  those  which  we  distinguish  as  sensation,  emo- 
tion and  thought,  solar  heat  being  the  final  source 
of  the  force  manifested  in  society,"  thus  affirming 
not  only  that  all  the  multiform  varieties  in  inor- 
ganic nature  but  the  still  greater  diversities  in  the 
higher  realms  of  life  have  been  evolved  from  strict 
homogeneity. 

Professor  Huxley  in  his  paper  on  the  "  Phys- 
ical Basis  of  Life  "  holds  that  protoplasm,  con- 
sisting of  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen  and  nitrogen 
in  complex  chemical  union,  is  the  very  matter  and 
basis  of  all  life.  Professor  Tyndall  in  his  chapter 
on  "  Vitality  "  near  the  close  of  his  "  Fragments 
of  Science  "  remarks,  "  Are  the  forces  of  organic 
matter  diff'erent  in  kind  from  those  of  inorganic? 
The  philosophy  of  the  present  day  negatives  the 
question.  It  is  the  compounding  in  the  organic 
world  of  forces  belonging  equally  to  the  inorganic 
that  constitutes  the  mystery  and  the  miracle  of 
vitality.  The  tendency  indeed,  of  modem  science 
is  to  break  down  the  wall  of  partition  between  the 
organic  and  the  inorganic,  and  to  reduce  both  to 


S2  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

the  operation  of  forces  which  are  the  same  in  kind 
but  whose  combinations  differ  only  in  complexity." 

Professor  Haeckel,  the  most  distinguished  and 
strenuous  advocate  of  Darwinism  in  Germany, 
claims  that  in  the  present  state  of  physiological 
knowledge  the  idea  of  a  Life-Giver  has  become 
unscientific;  that  the  admission  of  one  primordial 
form  is  sufficient,  and  that  that  was  a  moner,  con- 
sisting principally  of  carbon  in  the  form  of  the 
white  of  an  egg,  of  a  chemical  nature  solely,  and 
that  this  moner  is  the  product  of  self-generation. 

Professor  Tyndall  claimed  that  were  our  planet 
carved  from  the  sun  and  set  spinning  around  its 
axis  and  in  its  orbit  as  now,  the  consequence  of  its 
refrigeration  would  be  the  development  of  organic 
forces.  "  In  an  amorphous  drop  of  water,"  he 
says,  *'  lie  latent  all  the  marvels  of  crystalline 
force,  and  who  will  set  limits  to  the  possible  play 
of  molecules  in  a  cooling  planet?  ^ 

This  is  substantially  the  ground  taken  by 
Spencer,  Huxley,  Bain  and  many  others  of  the 
evolution  school. 

These  combined  theories,  essentially  atheistic, 
rest,  however,  on  a  most  insecure  foundation,  in- 
deed encounter  a  host  of  incontrovertible  facts 
which  they  are  utterly  inadequate  to  explain. 

It  may  be  admitted  that  at  the  first  matter  was 
formless,  motionless,  structureless  and  rayless. 
On  this  there  is  now  no  controversy  among  the 
different  schools  of  thought.  Moses  and  Herbert 
Spencer,  the  creationist  and  the  evolutionist,  the 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  33 

dates  of  whose  writings  are  separated  by  three 
thousand  years,  on  this  point  clasp  hands. 

The  belief  is  also  as  universal  that  this  absolute 
simplicity  of  form  and  of  nature  has,  after  the 
lapse  of  ages,  been  converted  into  an  almost  in- 
finite complexity,  and  that  the  cardinal  changes 
have  occurred  in  a  certain  order  of  sequence ;  but 
in  answering  the  question  as  to  how  these  changes 
have  been  effected,  these  schools  of  thought  at 
once  part  company. 

Those  who  affirm  that  in  this  unfolding  there 
are  no  evidences  of  the  active  presence  of  an  in- 
telligent personal  will-power  are  confronted  by 
seemingly  insuperable  objections  which  science  it- 
self has  furnished.  Science  discloses  a  law  of 
inertia  so  far-reaching  that  not  a  single  particle 
of  matter  in  all  the  wide  universe  can  set  itself  in 
motion.  It  also  discloses  that  there  is  not  a 
single  particle  that  is  now  at  rest.  Whence  that 
mighty  initial  impulse  that  thrilled  through  space 
and  is  still  felt  after  the  lapse  of  untold  ages 
peopling  the  heavens  with  whirling  worlds? 
Science  also  discloses  that  matter  once  supposed 
to  be  homogeneous  is  now  made  up  of  sixty-four 
or  more  different  kinds  of  atoms,  each  inclosing 
within  its  walls,  as  we  have  already  remarked,  a 
force  peculiar  to  itself,  working  under  absolutely 
fixed  conditions  which  no  skilled  chemist  has  ever 
succeeded  in  dislodging,  or  destroying,  or  chang- 
ing in  the  minutest  particular;  each  having  all 
the   characteristics   of   a   manufactured   article    as 


84  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

affirmed  by  Herschel,  Faraday  and  Clerk  Max- 
well, and  removed  completely  beyond  the  reach 
of  nature's  power  or  man's  device  to  make  or  mar, 
alter  or  destroy.  Out  of  these,  through  their 
mathematically  exact  chemical  combinations,  the 
whole  inorganic  world  has  been  built.  If  there 
was  once  a  time,  as  every  evolutionist  not  only 
concedes,  but  stoutly  contends,  when  every  atom 
was  precisely  like  every  other,  and  not  a  single  one 
had  the  faintest  touch  of  attractive  or  repellent 
or  affinitive  force,  through  what  instrumentality 
in  some  far  past  did  these  elemental  forces,  these 
individualized  somethings,  find  birth  and  an  abid- 
ing place  within  infinitesimal  and  indestructible 
walls  of  matter?  We  find  on  them  no  traces  of 
development  and  no  marks  of  decay.  They  are 
none  other  than  God's  immortals.  Over  the  na- 
ture of  their  being,  as  well  as  over  the  cradle  of 
their  birth,  there  has  been  thrown  a  veil  of  mys- 
tery through  whose  closely  woven  meshes  there 
comes  no  ray  of  revealing  light  to  the  anxiously 
peering  eyes  of  science,  and  whose  hiding  folds 
no  hand  on  earth  has  power  to  lift,  except  the 
reverent  hand  of  faith. 

Professor  Tyndall  acknowledges  that  of  forces 
proper,  the  essential  causes,  science  has  no  knowl- 
edge and  concerning  their  nature  and  ways  of 
working  it  can  safely  make  no  statement,  that 
these  forces  are  not  mutually  convertible  modes 
of  motion,  the  different  manifestations  of  some 
one  force    (the  law   of   conservation  having  been 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  35 

mistakenly  affirmed  of  them  rather  than  of  ener- 
gies their  phenomena),  but  are  distinct  spiritual 
entities  possessed  of  an  indestructible  identity. 
His  argument  on  this  point,  in  which,  controvert- 
ing the  generally  received  opinion,  he  cites  the 
attraction  of  gravitation  which  increases  and 
diminishes  inversely  as  the  square  of  the  distance, 
and  also  atomic  repulsion,  has  never  been  answered 
and  is  apparently  unanswerable.  Professor 
Faraday,  in  his  remarks  on  the  "  Conservation  of 
Force  "  says,  that  the  commonly  received  idea  of 
gravity  appears  to  ignore  entirely  the  principle, 

—  indeed,  to  be  in  direct  opposition  to  it. 
Skilled  specialists,  after  repeated  trials  to  dem- 
onstrate that  vitality  may  spring  through  spon- 
taneous generation  from  dead  matter,  now 
candidly  confess  that  all  their  efforts  have  thug 
far  proved  unavailing. 

Huxley  admits  that  "  nobody  has  yet  built  up 
inorganic  matter  into  living,  organized  proteine," 

—  that  "  chemistry  is  an  enormous  distance  from 
that  goal," —  that  "  the  chasm  between  the  living 
and  the  non-living  the  present  state  of  knowledge 
cannot  bridge." 

Huxley  gives  a  very  interesting  history  of  the 
utterly  futile  attempts  of  chemists  to  build  this 
bridge.  Dr.  Bastian  with  tireless  zeal  has  worked 
to  this  end,  and  thought  he  reached  it,  but  in  every 
one  of  his  experiments  there  has  been  detected  some 
fatal  flaw.  The  declaration  that  no  life  springs 
except  from  some  living  germ  has  stood  the  most 


36  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

crucial  test  of  science.  The  lamented  Agassiz  af- 
firmed this  in  his  last  lecture.  Carpenter,  Huxley, 
Tyndall,  all  the  leading  scientists,  with  refreshing 
candor,  reaffirm  it  to-day. 

With  equal  unanimity  the  world's  savants  point 
us  to  a  fire  period  during  which  not  only  all  the 
oceans  and  the  soils,  but  the  very  beds  of  oceans,  all 
the  mines  of  metal  and  quarries  of  rock  that  form 
the  earth,  were  once  but  drifting  clouds  of  burn- 
ing ether  in  whose  fierce  heat  the  hardiest  germ 
would  instantly  shrivel  and  disintegrate.  Whence, 
then,  those  first  eggs  out  of  which  sprang  the 
progenitors  of  those  countless  multitudes  of  living 
organisms  that  have  from  age  to  age  so  peopled 
our  planet? 

The  secret  of  the  egg,  its  nature  and  its  origin, 
quite  as  seriously  puzzles  and  confounds  the  evolu- 
tionist as  does  that  of  the  elemental  atom.  Within 
its  walls  there  hifles  a  wonder-working  fairy. 
Though  not  secure  from  intrusion,  as  is  the 
oxygen  or  the  carbon  force,  she  as  successfully 
eludes  the  prying  eyes  of  mortals  and  is  wrapped 
in  as  deep  a  mystery  as  to  what  she  is  or  whence 
she  came.  With  the  lenses  and  mirrors  of  his 
microscope,  the  scientist  tries  to  look  through  the 
curtained  windows  of  her  palace.  Baffled  in  that 
he  presumes  with  subtile  chemistry  to  bolt  un- 
bidden into  her  very  presence,  but  the  sprite, 
warned  by  the  first  footfall  of  the  intruder,  passes 
with    viewless    feet   through    some    secret   postern 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  37 

gate  into  the  unknown  beyond,  and  never  comes 
back  again.  After  this  he  compounds  in  his 
laboratory  the  like  chemical  ingredients  of  which 
he  has  found  the  egg  composed,  and  in  precisely 
the  same  propoi-tions,  and  then  exposes  this,  his 
skillfully  built  protoplasm,  to  a  carefully  adjusted 
heat.  Weeks  pass,  but  no  life.  For  a  third  time 
he  finds  himself  facing  failure.  At  last  with 
humbled  pride  he  accepts  the  truth  that  germinal 
force  is  not  some  property  inherent  in  matter,  but 
rather  an  organizing  impulse  introduced  from 
without,  separable  at  any  time  from  the  mass  over 
which  for  a  season  it  is  made  dominant,  the 
product  of  a  personal  creative  will  whose  im- 
palpable thought  it  is  commissioned  to  incarnate 
into  living  form. 

Dr.  Carpenter,  late  President  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  England  and  member  of  the  French 
Academy,  in  his  paper  on  the  "  Correlation  of 
Physical  and  Vital  Forces  "  states  that  "  the  best 
physiologists  of  the  present  day  separate  into  a 
distinct  category  vital  phenomena,  claiming  them 
to  differ  in  kind  altogether  from  those  of  physics 
or  chemistry."  They  are  produced  by  what  he 
styles  germinal  capacity,  an  inherent  hereditary 
power  within  the  germ,  an  agency  whose  office 
it  is  simply  to  direct  in  the  use  of  light,  heat, 
electricity,  and  the  other  elemental  energies,  and 
thus  by  their  help  build  up  matter  into  an  organ- 
ism answering  to  an  ideal  given  it.     The  vital  force 


38  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

is  held  not  to  supply  a  single  particle  of  energy 
but  only  to  turn  into  its  own  individual  channel 
a  portion  of  what  it  finds  outside. 

Again,  between  not  only  the  four  primordial 
divisions  of  the  animal  kingdom  and  also  the 
classes,  orders  and  genera,  but  even  the  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty  thousand  different  species,  it  has 
been  demonstrated,  after  a  century  of  most  pains- 
taking exploration  and  experiment,  there  have 
been  great  gulfs  fixed  which  no  natural,  delegated 
force  has  power  to  pass.  Within  certain  lines  it 
has  been  discovered  that  species  can  be  modified 
into  varieties  through  climatic  or  dietetic  influences 
or  cross-breeding,  but  changes  thus  effected  are 
found  quite  unstable,  the  parental  types  reappear- 
ing through  the  law  of  atavism  when  in  new 
surroundings  or  removed  from  the  culturing  care 
of  man.  But,  however,  when  an  attempt  is  made 
to  develop  absolutely  new,  distinct  species  out  of 
old  ones,  naturalists  encounter  in  the  law  of  the 
sterility  of  hybrids  an  uplifted  iron  hand,  and 
hear  a  stem  voice,  saying,  "  Thus  far,  but  no 
farther."  That  voice  they  are  rapidly  learning 
to  recognize  as  the  commanding  voice  of  God. 

Although  the  origin  of  species  is  a  matter  still 
in  dispute  among  scientists,  yet  the  theory  of  its 
being  the  result  of  direct  Divine  interference  is 
championed  by  many  advocates  of  profound  learn- 
ing and  of  international  repute.  The  late  Duke 
of  Argyll  who  has  won  for  himself  front  rank  by 
his  deep  research  and  lucid  expositions,  while  not 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  39 

positively  claiming  such  a  conclusion,  yet  leaves 
upon  the  minds  of  all  who  read  his  volume  en- 
titled "  Organic  Evolution,"  the  profound  convic- 
tion that  such  was  his  real  belief,  that  in  his 
opinion  such  a  solution  of  the  problem  was  not 
only  the  most  natural  but  well  nigh  the  inevitable 
one.  He  says,  "  If  mutations  of  species  have  oc- 
curred they  must  have  been  under  some  conditions 
and  under  some  law  of  which  we  have  no  example, 
and  can  form  no  conception.  Species  have  been 
quite  as  stable  throughout  all  geological  ages  as 
they  are  at  present.  They  continue  till  they  die 
and  then  are  often  suddenly  replaced  by  new  forms 
and  new  patterns,  all  as  definite  and  as  persistent 
as  before.  How  this  takes  place  no  man  as  yet 
can  tell.  The  new  species  never  seem  to  be  mere 
haphazard  variations  from  pre-existing  forms. 
They  never  have  the  least  appearance  of  the  law- 
less mixtures  of  hybridism.  On  the  contrary,  the 
new  forms  are  always  as  sharply  defined  as  the  old, 
differing  from  them  by  characteristics  which  are 
as  well  marked  and  as  constant  as  all  the  pred- 
ecessors in  the  wonderful  procession  of  organic 
Hfe." 

While  he  informs  us  that  Herbert  Spencer  ad- 
mits that  no  man  has  ev°r  yet  seen  a  new  species 
bom  by  ordinary  generation,  he  adds  that  the  long 
ages  of  Palaeontology  give  absolutely  no  clue, 
but  that  "  in  the  Jurassic  rocks  composed  of  un- 
disturbed deposits  thirteen  hundred  feet  thick, 
formed  through   the   lapse   of   unnumbered   ages, 


40  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

no  less  than  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty  new  species 
have  been  counted,  all  suddenly  appearing,  all 
lasting  for  a  time  and  then  superceded  by  newer 
ones,  that  these  medals  of  creation,  struck  each  of 
them  by  a  new  die,  do  not  imperceptibly  merge 
into  each  other." 

The  origin  of  bodily  organs  is  another  of  Na- 
ture's many  secrets  to  which  evolution  theories 
furnish  no  key.  These  organs  are  found  on  ex- 
amination to  be  contrivances  of  the  most  compli- 
cated character,  combining  often  into  a  single 
group  hundreds  of  closely  correlated  parts  so 
nicely  adjusted,  so  absolutely  interdependent  in 
many  instances,  that  the  absence  of  any  one  would 
not  only  seriously  cripple  the  others,  but  render 
them  totally  inoperative,  hopelessly  defeating 
the  purpose  of  the  mechanism.  These  parts  being 
thus  unquestionably  complemental  one  to  the  other 
and  incapable  of  performing  any  useful  office  un- 
less combined,  their  origin  and  present  combination 
can  be  accounted  for  only  as  a  projection  into 
physical  fact  of  an  ideal  previously  conceived  and 
matured  by  some  organizing  mind.  It  seems  ab- 
surd to  suppose  that  each  part  could  have  been 
originated  independently,  without  any  reference 
to  the  others,  and  slowly  developed,  in  its  own 
time  and  way,  out  of  some  minute,  indefinite, 
fortuitous  variations,  either  through  the  influence 
of  its  environment  or  through  some  internal  blind 
force,  into  its  present  perfected  and  permanent 
form,  and  then  that  they  all,  through  some  chance 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  41 

circumstance,  should  have  fallen  into  each  other's 
company,  and  have  proved  so  exactly  suited  and 
so  absolutely  essential  each  to  each  as  to  become 
at  last  thus  inseparably  associated  in  close  cor- 
porate work. 

In  the  interior  of  the  ear  there  is  an  immense 
number  of  minute,  rod-like  bodies,  termed  Fibres 
of  Corti,  having  the  appearance  of  a  keyboard. 
Each  fibre  is  connected  with  a  filament  of  the 
auditory  nerve.  These  shreds  of  the  nerve  are 
strings  and  the  fibres  are  the  keys  that  strike 
them.  This  is  believed  to  be  a  keyboard  in  func- 
tion as  well  as  appearance,  and  through  it  not  only 
melody  but  even  harmony  of  sounds  finds  an 
avenue  to  the  brain.  Here,  as  Sir  George  Mivart 
suggests,  is  an  anticipatory  contrivance,  for  our 
progenitors  had  no  wants  in  their  simple  modes 
of  hfe  which  could  possibly  call  into  play  an  in- 
strument of  such  unlimited  resources  of  sym- 
phony ;  an  instrument  that  has  proved  itself  ca- 
pable of  interpreting  to  privileged  multitudes  the 
pathos  and  the  rapture  of  a  Beethoven  and  a 
Mendelssohn. 

In  the  human  eye  there  have  been  discovered 
by  anatomists  upwards  of  eight  hundred  distinct 
contrivances.  Seven  matched  socket  bones,  a  self- 
adjusting  curtain  with  its  delicate  fringe  of  hair, 
a  projecting  eyebrow,  six  outer  muscles  of  the 
ball,  one  of  them  geared  through  a  pulley,  oil 
and  tear  glands  with  an  accompanying  waste 
pipe,  a  hard,  transparent,  elastic  cornea  set  in  the 


42  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

white  sclerotica,  an  expanding  and  contracting 
pupil,  an  aqueous,  a  crystalline  and  a  vitreous 
humor,  an  inward  net  work  of  nerves, —  such  are 
some  of  the  more  noticeable  points  of  an  instru- 
ment, which,  in  the  ingenuity  of  its  adjustments 
eclipses  any  invention  of  any  human  genius  of 
any  era.  Note  but  one  of  its  contrivances.  By 
this  its  possessor  can  both  thread  a  needle  and 
sight  a  star.  The  sclerotic  and  choroid  coats  are 
filled  with  minute  muscles  which  can  flatten  and 
press  back  towards  the  retina  the  crystalline 
humor  and  by  the  same  movement  change  also  the 
form  and  refracting  power  of  the  vitreous  humor 
in  which  the  lens  lies.  A  reverse  process  can  be 
effected  with  equal  ease.  Thus  the  ends  which  are 
clumsily,  painfully,  imperfectly  attained  by  the 
apparatus  of  the  astronomer  and  the  microscopist 
are  here  secured  without  spherical  aberration  in- 
stantly and  by  simple  volition. 

It  would  seem  impossible  to  account  for  the 
development  of  such  a  complicated  instrument  by 
means  of  a  natural  selection,  according  to  the  Dar- 
winian theory,  from  among  minute,  indefinite,  for- 
tuitous variations,  that  selection  being  guided  sim- 
ply by  the  urgent  demands  of  a  struggle  for  life, 
for  the  Instrument  in  order  to  be  of  any  advantage 
in  this  struggle  must  have  a  concurrence  of  parts 
predicating  a  multitude  of  initial  concurrent  de- 
partures  from  the  parental  type. 

Only  on  this  concurrence  comes  the  gift  of 
sight,  and  the  very   fact  that  such  an   end  has 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  43 

been  attained  by  such  complicated  means  at  the 
very  outset  before  any  selection  can  possibly  take 
place,  furnishes,  it  would  seem,  a  complete  answer 
to  this  theory.  Even  the  simplest  eyes,  those  that 
are  fixed  and  angular  and  of  least  focal  power, 
furnish  us  this  argument  in  its  full  force,  for 
not  one  of  them  is  so  simple  but  that  even  it  is 
the  resultant  of  simultaneous  and  corresponding 
growths  of  different  parts,  each  of  an  independent 
origin  and  development,  and  each  utterly  useless 
until  conjoined  with  the  others  in  a  symmetrical 
whole.  Also  at  each  advance  step  in  compass  and 
complexity  the  same  difficulties  confront  the  evo- 
lutionist, for  each  is  made  up  of  an  entirely  sep- 
arate set  of  concurrent  changes.  It  is  a  very 
significant  fact  that  the  trilobites,  one  of  the  oldest 
of  fossil  forms,  to  all  appearance  coming  sud- 
denly upon  the  scene,  without  as  yet  any  dis- 
covered ancestry,  possessed  fully  developed  organs 
of  sight. 

In  the  face  of  such  facts  how  can  Professor 
Haeckel,  the  distinguished  German  exponent  of 
Darwinism,  insist  that  "  the  history  of  evolution 
convinces  us  that  the  highly  purposive  and  ad- 
mirably constituted  sense-organs,  like  all  other 
organs,  have  developed  without  premeditated  aim." 

Exploring  parties  of  geologists,  naturalists, 
and  anatomists,  after  having  with  inexhaustible 
patience,  with  trained  powers  of  observation,  with 
most  ingenious  instruments  of  research,  ransacked 
the   rock   record   of   earth's    crust   down   through 


44  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

even  the  Silurian  strata  to  the  very  dawn  of  be- 
ing, and  having  examined  the  present  occupants 
of  every  continent  and  sea,  now  testify  in  the 
name  of  science  that  nowhere  among  extinct 
species  or  living  ones  have  there  come  to  light 
any  facts  proving  that  there  were  any  such  proc- 
esses as  evolutionists  so  boldly  announce  to  have 
taken  place  in  introducing  the  different  gradations 
of  sentient  life  on  this  planet. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  many  curious  instances 
of  mimicries  in  nature,  and  indeed  of  all  phe- 
nomena of  correlated  growth. 

Materialistic  expounders  of  the  universe  also 
find  themselves  confronted  on  every  side  by  the  ever 
recurring  phenomena  of  instinct  and  are  at  their 
wits'  end  to  account  for  that  perfect  poise  and  mas- 
tery of  body  exhibited  by  some  animals  directly 
after  birth,  for  that  accurate  intuitive  knowledge  of 
perspective,  that  minute  familiarity  with  first 
witnessed  scenes,  that  unrivaled  ingenuity  of  de- 
sign and  flawless  finish  in  mechanical  execution 
of  works  performed  without  experience  or  a  guid- 
ing model  or  the  aid  of  instruction,  that  instan- 
taneous grasp  of  the  most  occult  principles  in 
natural  philosophy  and  profound  acquaintance 
with  the  laws  of  chemical  and  vital  action,  and 
especially  that  far  glance  of  prophecy  on  the 
accuracy  of  which  depend  the  lives  not  only  of 
individuals,  but  even  of  entire  species.  Theorists 
who  cling  to  a  naturalistic  explanation  denomi- 
nate instinct  a  lapsed  intelligence,  affirming  that 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  45 

it  is  the  accumulated  wisdom  of  past  generations 
acquired  through  painful  and  protracted  ex- 
perience and  handed  down  under  the  laws  of 
heredity  in  the  form  of  fixed  habits  and  of  con- 
stitutional mental  bent.  But  scientific  investi- 
gations in  natural  history  have  brought  to  light 
thousands  of  facts  to  which  such  an  explanation 
is  wholly  inapplicable,  which  fairly  laugh  these 
theorists  down. 

The  solitary  wasp  brings  to  the  mouth  of  a 
pit  which  she  has  dug  with  her  mandibles  and  into 
which  she  has  dropped  an  egg,  a  given  number  of 
small  grubs  so  stung  that  their  bodies,  while 
smitten  with  paralysis,  have  just  enough  life  left 
to  keep  them  from  decaj;  until  there  shall  issue 
from  the  egg  the  worm  whose  hungry  maw  they 
are  fated  to  fill.  This  solitary  mother  wasp,  with 
absolutely  no  experience  or  observation  of  her 
own  or  of  others  to  guide  her,  acts  as  if  she  knew 
positively  not  only  that  a  worm  would  some  day 
be  hatched  from  her  egg  but  precisely  when  that 
day  would  come ;  that  this  worm  would  not  have 
the  faculty  to  care  for  itself  and  that  she  would 
never  live  to  care  for  it ;  that  grub-meat  though 
unpalatable  to  her  would  be  keenly  relished  by 
it,  that  a  given  number  of  grubs  would  suffice 
for  its  needs ;  and  that  thej^,  shot  through  with  her 
subtle  poison,  would  lie  dormant  till  it  came. 

The  same  acute  discrimination  may  be  observed 
in  all  insects  in  selecting  for  their  egg  deposits 
such  surroundings  as  will  most  surely  conduce  to 


46  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

the  hatching  and  subsequent  maintenance  of  their 
young,  although  the  conditions  of  their  offspring's 
life  are  In  most  marked  contrast  to  their  own. 
One  will  choose  a  particular  kind  of  leaf,  another 
the  skin  of  a  certain  living  animal,  still  another 
that  of  a  certain  dead  one. 

Guided  by  this  parental  instinct  birds  set  out 
on  their  migratory  journeys  across  entire  conti- 
nents, over  pathless  deserts  and  seas.  Salmon  ex- 
change salt  water  for  fresh,  following  far  inland 
the  courses  of  the  rivers,  at  times  shooting  up 
steep  waterfalls  of  great  height  and  swiftness ; 
the  herring  travel  to  the  south,  while  the  mackerel 
seek  the  colder  currents  of  nothern  climes.  Is  it 
possible  that  these  animals,  untaught  and  inex- 
perienced, are  so  deeply  versed  in  biological  lore 
that  they  are  enabled,  by  their  own  judgment,  to 
determine  unerringly  the  precise  conditions  fitted 
for  the  development  of  the  embryo  in  the  egg? 
And  is  it  also  possible  for  them  to  know  in  what 
localities  they  will  find  those  conditions  fulfilled, 
or  for  them  to  thread  their  way  thither  for  the 
first  time,  without  a  guide,  over  prairies  and  sand- 
plains  and  tumbling  ocean  billows.? 

The  spider  that  builds  its  tiny  diving-bell,  an- 
chors it  with  strong  cable  to  the  river  bottom, 
and  distends  its  walls  with  air  pressed  from  en- 
tangling meshes  of  web  on  its  abdomen,  and  then, 
within  this  Its  royal  pavilion,  that  shines  through 
the  water  like  a  globe  of  woven  silver,  rears  with 
watchful  wisdom,  amid  seemingly  most  hostile  sur- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  47 

roundings,  its  brood  of  hungry  children,  Is  an- 
other one  out  of  the  vast  multitude  of  living 
witnesses  that  testify  to  a  direct  divine  informing 
of  the  mental  life  below  the  human,  the  Impulsive 
promptings  of  instinct  being  followed  blindly  by 
those  creatures  which  stand  thus  in  imperative 
need  of  Its  guiding  wisdom.  As  well  accredit  an 
Intelligent  self-conscious  purpose  to  those  par- 
ticles of  matter  which,  when  the  time  Is  ripe,  ar- 
range themselves  with  such  promptness  and 
precision  along  the  lines  of  symmetry  which  form 
the  faces  of  crystals  or  the  exquisite  patterns  of 
flowers,  as  to  ascribe  to  these  lower  orders  of 
sentient  being  the  knowledge,  the  invention,  and 
the  prescience  which  their  works  display. 

There  are  other  species  of  spiders,  widely 
differentiated  from  this,  yet  exhibiting  equally 
marvelous  skill  and  prescience  and  Intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  Nature's  laws ;  some  of  which, 
while  never  spreading  a  snare,  weave  and  securely 
anchor  a  single  cable  In  order  to  effect  a  safe 
recovery  after  springing  on  their  prey ;  others 
fashioning  a  sumptuous  underground  retreat, 
water  tight,  with  plastered  walls  hung  with  most 
delicate  silk  tapestry,  and  with  entrance  guarded 
by  a  bevel-edged  door  rwung  on  a  spring  hinge 
to  make  It  self-shutting  and  secure  against  being 
crushed  In  by  the  heavy  tread  of  any  one  who 
might  chance  that  way ;  and  still  others  which, 
having  spun  out  of  their  own  bodies  veritable 
aeroplanes,  boldly  cut  loose  from  the  earth  and 


48  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

navigate  the  air  whenever  they  choose  to  change 
their  habitat.  And  there  are  many  kinds  of  bees 
and  ants,  and  other  httle  denizens  on  the  planet, 
that  in  their  wonder-working  bear  equally  unim- 
peachable witness  to  a  Divine  informing;  but  I 
will  pass  them  by  as  they  are  more  or  less  familiar 
to  all,  and  will  call  especial  attention  to  the  start- 
ling case  of  the  gall  fly  because  of  the  profound 
significance  of  its  history  and  its  important  bear- 
ing on  the  question  at  issue.  Its  convinc- 
ing testimony  has  been  hitherto  strangely  over- 
looked. 

It  starts  out  in  life  a  worm,  and  a  very  tiny 
one  at  that,  with  nothing  to  do  but  eat  and  grow. 
It  finds  within  ready  reach  the  right  kind  of  food 
prepared  and  stored  away  for  it  long  before  it 
was  born.  But  as  the  monotonous  hours  creep 
by  a  wonderful  metamorphosis  takes  place. 
Wings  lift  up  out  of  its  smooth  skin,  legs  grow, 
its  mouth  changes,  and,  last  of  all,  on  the  under 
side  of  the  abdomen  a  long  slender  ovipositor  ap- 
pears spirally  rolled  up  and  lodged  in  a  groove 
ready  for  use,  terminating  in  most  curiously  fash- 
ioned tools  fitted  for  tasks  so  various  and  so  in- 
tricate that  entomologists  though  prying  into 
their  secrets  for  a  hundred  years  have  discovered 
as  yet  only  a  part  of  them.  After  it  reaches 
maturity  and  itself  enters  upon  the  duties  of 
motherhood,  it  seems  to  know  at  once  what  instru- 
ments have  been  given  it  and  precisely  how  to  use 
them,  for,  spreading  its  wings,  it  soon  alights  on 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  49 

the  rough  rind  of  an  oak  and  begins  at  once  to 
bore  and  rasp  and  brush  and  in  many  queer  ways 
to  irritate  the  tissues  of  the  tree,  and  after  this 
elaborate  preparation  it  pours  in  and  around  the 
minute  hole  it  has  made  in  some  branch  an  acrid 
concoction  that  has  been  compounded  in  the  hid- 
den laboratory  of  its  own  organism,  and  then 
deposits  out  of  sight  a  minute  egg, —  that  still 
unsolved  mystery  of  the  universe  —  and,  flying 
away,  leaves  it  to  its  fate. 

Is  it  culpable  carelessness  for  this  mother  gall 
fly  to  thus  concern  herself  no  further  about  the 
future  happenings  of  that  infinitesimal  germ  of 
life  which  has  been  so  guardedly  wrapped  up  with 
a  deftness  far  surpassing  that  of  the  fancied 
fingers  of  fairies?  Is  she  not  rather  blindly  fol- 
lowing the  guidance  of  a  wisdom  and  a  kindly  care 
not  her  own?     Watch  the  result. 

That  mysterious  liquid  with  which  this  Insig- 
nificant insect  saturates  the  tree's  tough  fibres 
seems  to  possess  talismanic  power,  thrilling  with 
a  new  strange  impulse  the  heart  of  the  old  oak, 
quickening  into  activity  latent  architectural 
capabilities  of  the  possession  of  which  there  has 
not  until  now  been  the  slightest  Intimation.  The 
oak  at  once  sets  about  building  for  the  egg 
of  this  strange  intruder  the  most  elaborate,  com- 
plex, perfectly  sheltered  nest  It  would  seem  pos- 
sible to  devise.  It  consists  of  a  round  ball  encased 
In  a  leather-like  covering  through  which  not  a 
drop  of  moisture  can  penetrate,  and  hung  out  In 


50  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

the  light  from  the  chosen  branch  by  fastenings 
so  secure  and  by  a  cord  so  strong  no  blast  of  wind 
can  wrench  it  from  its  moorings.  If  you  will 
cut  open  that  ball  you  will  find  it  to  contain  a 
central  cell  held  in  place  by  numberless  radiating 
fibrous  threads,  and,  thus  embedded  in  granular 
pith,  removed  from  out  the  reach  of  frost  and 
all  hostile  forces ;  and  in  that  cell,  hard  and  smooth 
within  and  spacious  enough  for  the  newcomer 
to  grow  in,  you  will  find  the  very  egg  this  raother- 
fly  had  inserted  into  the  old  oak  and  left  to  its 
fostering  care. 

Not  only  has  the  oak  been  entrusted  with  this 
strange  commission  but  the  willow  and  the  rose 
bush,  the  coriander  and  the  Indian  tamarisk  as 
well,  for  they  prove  equally  as  prompt  and  as  able 
to  respond  to  the  nesting  needs  of  the  favored  fly. 
Each  follows  out  its  own  architectural  plans,  but 
each  builds  to  the  same  end.  Galls  hang  about 
the  catkins  like  bunches  of  grapes.  They  crop 
out  from  the  roots  capacious  enough  to  comfort- 
ably house  a  thronging  colony.  Some  galls  have 
a  prickly  covering;  some  resemble  artichokes; 
some,  lumps  of  dried  garden  soil,  as  those  on  the 
tamarisk ;  some  are  like  delicately  tinted  wax  ap- 
ples, as  the  famous  apples  of  Sodom  referred  to 
in  the  ancient  classics  as  found  hanging  from 
the  boughs  of  dwarfed  oaks  in  the  desolate  region 
of  the  Dead  Sea.  You  may  find  them  on  grasses, 
and  along  the  stalks  of  various  sorts  of  grain. 
They  are  widely  distributed  and  from  their  valu- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  51 

able  dyeing  properties  have  become  important 
articles  of  a  world-wide  commerce. 

These  facts  which  I  have  here  but  very  briefly 
cited,  have  undergone  scientific  scrutiny  until  now 
no  well-informed  person  thinks  of  controverting 
them.  They  can  be  readily  verified  by  any  careful 
observer,  and  they  are  but  a  single  group  out 
of  a  vast  multitude  of  corresponding  and  equally 
suggestive  facts  recorded  in  the  books  of  natu- 
ralists. But  their  full  significance  seems  largely 
to  have  been  overlooked  even  by  the  most  thought- 
ful interpreters  of  nature. 

To  only  a  single  phase  of  their  meaning  do  I 
purpose  at  present  to  direct  attention.  It  re- 
lates to  that  oft  mooted  question  of  whether  there 
are  any  unmistakable  evidences  of  the  exercise  of 
special  Divine  will  power  to  provide  for  the  needs 
of  any  of  the  multiform  varieties  of  sentient  life 
that  people  this  planet. 

Note  in  the  first  place,  how  absolutely  out  of 
the  ordinary  is  this  phenomenon.  Wound  the  oak 
or  the  willow,  or  the  rose-bush  in  any  other  way, 
and  pour  into  the  wound  any  other  kind  of  liquid, 
and  the  result  will  be,  if  the  liquid  be  not  poison- 
ous, simply  that  the  sap  will  flow  out  heedlessly 
until  the  curative  forc3s  of  the  tree  heal  the  in- 
cision and  the  surrounding  fibres  are  hardened 
into  a  knot.  If  an  insect  or  an  egg  is  caught  in 
the  flow  it  is  ruthlessly  swept  along  or  embedded 
in  its  viscid  current  and  its  life  smothered  or 
crushed.     If  the  tree   is   poisoned   the   deposited 


5%  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

egg  may  be  saved  from  disaster  by  the  arresting 
of  plant  growth  immediately  about  it,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  locust  sting.  Let  any  innocuous 
foreign  substance  be  lodged  among  the  tissues 
and  they  will  simply  tighten  about  it  with  an  in- 
tensified grip  that  never  lets  go,  the  substance  be- 
coming overgrown  and  imprisoned  until  the  tree 
dies  and  the  disintegrating  chemical  forces  step 
in  and  tear  down  the  walls  of  the  palace  which  the 
life  force  had,  cell  upon  cell,  with  such  infinite 
patience  and  matchless  skill  built  for  itself  out  of 
the  air  and  sunlight  and  the  soil  and  the  dew. 
Unless  the  gall-fly  chances  that  way,  the  oak  and 
the  willow  and  the  rose-bush  and  the  tamarisk 
will  go  on  year  in  and  year  out  multiplying  their 
branches  in  the  same  old  way,  putting  on  and  off 
their  coverings  of  leaves  and  maturing  each  their 
peculiar  flower  and  fruit,  and  die  at  last  with- 
out showing  the  least  sign  that  power  had  ever 
been  given  them  to  execute  any  other  commis- 
sion. 

With  this  single  exception  the  energizing  of 
every  vegetive  force  is  directed  throughout  the 
plant's  entire  history  exclusively,  either  toward 
the  conservation  of  its  own  life,  or  the  perpetu- 
ation of  its  own  species, —  a  case  of  self-seeking, 
pure  and  simple.  Here,  on  the  other  hand,  in 
most  marked  contrast  is  a  case  of  altruism  without 
one  trace  of  self-seeking  in  it,  the  strange  benef- 
icence reaching  over  even  into  the  boundaries  of 
an  entirely  diff^erent  kingdom. 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  55 

Note,  in  the  second  place,  the  exhaustive 
knowledge  of  the  present  environment  and  sure 
prescience  of  the  future  needs  of  the  new  life, 
and  the  supreme  mastery  over  all  environing 
forces.  How  this  architectural  task  is  accom- 
plished and  by  what  device  the  egg  reaches  and 
keeps  its  ultimate  central  vantage-ground  are, 
and  probably  will  ever  remain,  among  nature's 
insolvable  mysteries.  The  plans  and  specifica- 
tions for  the  building  and  best  methods  for  carry- 
ing on  the  work  were  undoubtedly  thought  out  to 
their  minutest  detail  by  the  Infinite,  Organizing 
Intelligence,  and  the  skill  needed  for  their  suc- 
cessful execution  was  imparted  and  then  held  in 
reserve  until  just  this  emergency  should  arise,  or 
else  the  specific  Impulse  and  the  skill  are  the  direct, 
instantaneous  output  of  a  Divine  will.  At  all 
events  there  is  no  evidence  of  any  slow,  evolu- 
tionary process,  of  any  gradual  increase  and 
refinement  of  power  from  crude,  embryonic  be- 
ginnings to  final  perfectness,  wrought  out,  bit 
by  bit,  by  successive  exigencies  extending  over  a 
long  lapse  of  time. 

Exactly  how  that  strange  concoction,  with 
which  the  gall-fly  saturates  the  woody  fibres  of 
the  oak,  suddenly  awakens  into  Intense  activity 
these  slumbering,  undreamed  of  capabilities  of  the 
vegetlve  force  and  incite  it  to  the  accomplishment 
of  a  purpose  so  utterly  foreign  to  its  own  neces- 
sities, what  ingredient  there  is  in  it  that  imparts 
this  magical  power  it  would  be  futile  for  us  to 


54.  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

attempt  to  conjecture.  But  we  can  see  that  the 
same  Intelligence  that  planned  the  growth  of  the 
gall  as  a  nesting  place  for  the  egg  and  the  off- 
spring of  the  fly,  also  planned  the  compounding 
of  that  potent  fluid,  equipped  the  fly  with  its 
working  outfit,  taught  it  how  and  where  to  inject 
this  liquid,  and  established  that  deep  correlation 
between  the  forces  resident  in  entirely  separate 
kingdoms  whereby  this  exceptional  service  is  se- 
cured in  the  life  processes  of  nature. 

How  far-reaching,  how  complicate  the  plan ! 
What  infinite  painstaking !  What  profundity  of 
knowledge!  What  perfection  of  skill!  The  oak 
and  the  fly,  what  are  they  but  blind  instruments, 
unconsciously  carrying  out  the  purposes  of  a 
special,  Divine  beneficence.?  Let  those  theorists, 
who  decry  any  belief  in  a  special  providence,  ex- 
plain, if  they  can,  this  circle  of  correlated  phe- 
nomena on  any  other  hypothesis. 

But  over  the  question  of  the  advent  and  dis- 
tinctive attributes  of  man  the  battle  of  the  schools 
has  been  most  hotly  contested,  calling  into  action 
on  both  sides  every  reserve  force  of  scholarship 
and  mental  acumen,  as  the  issues  at  stake  tran- 
scend every  other,  involving  not  only  the  founda- 
tions of  theistic  faith,  but  even  the  very  evidences 
of  an  endless  life. 

The  extensive  scientific  investigations  which 
have  grown  out  of  this  heated  controversy  have 
brought  to  light  a  vast  array  of  most  interesting 
and  significant  facts  tg  which  the  extreme  evolu- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  55 

tionist  and  the  equally  extreme  creationist  have 
both  gone  for  corroborative  proofs  of  their  the- 
ories, and  neither  of  them  gone  in  vain. 

Man  in  his  body,  in  his  instincts,  and  in  his 
mental  traits,  bears  many  very  striking  re- 
semblances to  the  brute  tribes,  suggesting  some 
closer  tie  than  the  strict  creationist  is  yet  ready 
to  admit;  although  out  of  the  lines  of  affinity 
with  the  numerous  ape  and  lemuroid  species  that 
are  by  scientists  classed  with  man  in  the  sub- 
orders of  primates,  there  could  be  constructed, 
as  a  distinguished  writer  has  remarked,  "  only  a 
net-work  and  not  a  ladder."  There  have  also 
been  found  in  man  equally  marked  differences, 
suggesting,  on  the  other  hand,  that  in  effecting  the 
changes  there  were  actively  present  higher  forces 
than  mechanical  or  chemical  or  even  vital,  and 
that  there  was  introduced,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
atom  and  the  egg,  an  absolutely  new  ingredient, 
of  which  there  was  no  germ  even,  anywhere  ex- 
isting. 

In  man  we  miss  the  brute's  great  teeth  and 
claws,  we  note  fewer  instincts,  a  lessened  speed,  a 
weakened  muscle,  a  blunted  sense,  a  back  laid  bare, 
a  skin  left  tender;  divergencies  which  would  de- 
note marked  degeneracy  were  they  not  most 
strangely  accompanied  by  a  vastly  increased  mass 
and  multiplied  convolution  of  brain.  Here  ap- 
pears that  same  deep  correlation  on  which  the 
parts  of  a  bodily  organ  are  built,  bearing  the  same 
emphatic    testimony   to    the   prior    existence,    the 


56  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

personal  presence,  and  the  plastic  power  of  some 
intelligent,  organizing  will. 

At  the  same  time  that  the  changes  occurred  in 
the  body,  corresponding  ones  must  have  reached 
the  brain,  for  the  one  change  without  the  other, 
as  Darwin  confesses,  would  have  been  a  serious 
hindrance  in  the  struggle  for  life,  and,  if  his 
theory  be  true,  could  not  have  long  survived.  As 
in  the  formation  of  the  eye  and  ear,  modifications 
occurring  at  different  starting-points,  and  each 
developing  along  an  independent  line,  must  have 
united  in  a  concert  of  action  before  they  could 
be  of  any  advantage;  so  independent,  synchro- 
nous, and  corresponding  changes  must  have  taken 
place  in  both  the  body  and  brain  of  the  brute 
to  have  produced  the  man,  even  waiving  the  ques- 
tion of  his  being  distinctively  endowed  with  a 
moral,  accountable  nature.  Selection  from  mi- 
nute indefinite  variations,  such  as  Darwin  supposes, 
could  have  here  played  no  part.  Would  creation 
be  a  misnomer  for  such  a  circle  of  changes.'' 
Brutes,  though  thus  men's  progenitors,  could  have 
sustained  to  them  no  closer  relation  than  the  soil 
to  the  flowers  which  open  out  from  it  their  tinted 
and  perfumed  petals. 

To  be  sure,  there  is  here  no  change  in  the 
material  ingredients.  Neither  is  there  any,  when 
out  of  the  soil  a  flower  unfolds  its  tinted  petals 
and  fills  the  air  with  its  fragrance ;  but  as  the  soil, 
the  moisture,  and  the  sunlight  have  no  power  to 
thus  combine  into  this  marvel  of  grace  and  color 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  57 

and  sweetness  until  the  directive  force  of  some 
buried  germ  thrills  them  with  its  talismanic  touch, 
so  neither  in  the  body  of  the  brute  nor  in  the 
nature  of  its  environment  dwells  there  any  power 
known  to  science  capable  of  producing  such  a 
circle  of  complemental  changes,  physical  and 
vital,  as  mark  the  advent  of  man. 

Furthermore,  science  in  its  explorations  in  the 
higher  realm  of  thought  has  brought  to  light  a 
class  of  phenomena  so  entirely  novel  as  to  indicate 
that  there  has  taken  place  something  more  than  a 
mere  modification  of  the  four  forces,  mechanic, 
atomic,  vital  and  instinctive,  which  have  been  suc- 
cessively set  at  work  In  the  world,  that  an  abso- 
lutely new  force  has  been  ushered  in,  a  force  pos- 
sessing characteristics  so  fundamentally  different 
from  all  others  that  they  can  in  no  sense  be  re- 
garded as  its  progenitors,  and  a  force  not  only 
of  a  uniqueness  so  complete  as  to  thus  preclude 
any  suggestion  of  kinship,  but  of  a  uniqueness 
so  peculiar  that  it  becomes  a  travesty  on  scientific 
interpretation  to  explain  it  simply  as  an  unfold- 
ing under  the  universal  law  of  evolution  of  another 
one  of  the  hidden,  inherent  properties  of  matter. 
And  this  new  force,  known  as  a  self-conscious  and 
a  responsibly  sovereign  ego,  is  apparently  the 
exclusive    Inheritance    of   man.    Is    his    distinctive 

t  feature,  lifts  him  completely  up   out  of  the  Iott 

'  plane  of  brute  being. 

In  the  mental  life  below  the  human  there  are 
semblances  of  self-conscious,  deliberative  thought. 


58  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

of  moral  discernment  and  responsible  free-will; 
and  instances  of  this  nature  are  so  many  and  so 
striking,  the  belief  is  prevalent,  not  only  in  scien- 
tific but  even  in  religious  circles,  that  we  differ 
from  the  brutes  only  in  having  a  clearer  thought, 
a  deeper  discernment,  a  wider  freedom ;  but  there 
are  now  advanced  investigators  of  the  highest  at- 
tainments and  of  international  celebrity  who  be- 
lieve that  those  semblances  are  wholly  delusive, 
and  that  in  this  mysterious  pantomimic  life  below 
us  there  are  no  really  reliable  evidences  of  the 
presence  of  a  distinctive,  self-conscious,  spiritual 
force  constituting  true  personality.  Animals 
unquestionably  possess  in  common  with  us  blind 
instinct,  sensation,  direct  perception,  association 
of  objects  and  ideas,  automatic  attention,  involun- 
tary memory,  indeliberate  volition,  reproductive 
imagination,  sympathetic  emotion  and  emotional 
expression.  Nearly,  if  not  quite  all  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  their  thought-life  can  come  through 
the  exercise  of  just  these  low  forms  of  mentality 
and  do  not  necessarily  imply  that  they  ever  get 
beyond  the  domain  of  the  senses,  that  they  have 
any  abstract,  deliberative,  introspective  thought, 
that  their  consciousness  ever  reaches  up  into  con- 
sciousness of  self.  Their  mental  states  may  be,  and 
probably  are,  simply  passive ;  their  memories  and 
imaginations  but  prolonging  and  multiplying 
their  sense-perception  through  laws  of  association 
and  suggestion. 

It  is  true  there  are  some  few  phenomena  that  do 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  59 

not  seem  susceptible  of  this  explanation,  but  as 
we  find  clearly  within  the  charmed  circle  of  in- 
stinct, where  there  is  uniformly  nothing  but  blind 
obedience  to  a  God-given  impulse,  acts  which  to 
ordinary  observers  show  deliberation,  design,  pro- 
found reasoning,  even  moral  purpose  on  the  part 
of  the  animal,  we  naturally  feel  warranted  in  as- 
suming that  these  occasional  instances  met  with 
apparently  outside  of  this  circle,  and  indicating 
that  animals  at  times  really  enter  within  the  vesti- 
bule, at  least,  of  self-conscious  life,  are  delusive, 
that  the  real  mental  background  to  these  unvoiced 
acts  may  after  all  be  God's,  and  not  theirs. 

The  belief  that  thus  with  the  advent  of  man 
there  was  introduced  an  entirely  new  force,  a 
spiritual,  self-conscious,  personal  entity,  seems  to 
find  further  warrant  in  the  fact  that  he  alone  has 
ever  manifested  a  desire  or  shown  a  capacity  for 
progress,  intentionally  improving  on  the  past. 
Did  animals  really  have  souls  in  them,  did  they 
possess  truly  reflective  faculties  like  our  own,  the 
developing  influences  of  the  tens  of  thousands  of 
years,  that  have  one  by  one  rolled  round  since 
their  life  began,  would  have  wrought  in  them  an 
advancement  so  marked  that  their  mental  status 
would  long  since  have  been  placed  beyond  all 
controversy. 

That  this  non-progresslveness  is  not  rightly 
chargeable  to  bodily  imperfections  is  clearly 
evinced  in  the  wonder-workings  of  the  ant,  the 
spider,  and  the  bee.     Apes  have  hands  but  they 


60  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

have  never  yet  built  a  fire  or  replenished  one,  or 
shaped  a  tool. 

This  belief  finds  still  further  warrant  in  the 
fact  that  with  brutes  instinct  reigns ;  with  man, 
reason;  that  they  have  their  thinking  done  for 
them,  he  is  forced  to  do  his  himself;  that  they 
reach  perfection,  without  effort,  at  a  single  bound ; 
he,  if  at  all,  only  after  repeated  and  disheartening 
failure;  that  with  them  the  final  purpose  seems  to 
be  simply  to  conserve  the  body,  with  him,  to  im- 
prove the  mind;  that  with  them  the  supplying  of 
physical  wants  brings  unbroken  peace,  a  deep 
content,  the  horizon  of  their  thought  shutting 
closely  down  about  the  now  and  the  near ;  with 
him  there  is  ever  a  vague  unrest,  an  unsatisfied 
longing,  an  indefinable  dread,  angel-winged  ex- 
pectancies. 

How  can  we  account  for  God's  pouring  out  such 
wealth  of  inventive  thought  in  care  for  brutes' 
bodies  and  showing  not  the  least  concern,  as  far 
as  we  can  see,  for  preserving  and  developing  any- 
thing nobler,  except  on  the  ground  that  he  has 
planted  in  them  no  germs  of  anything  nobler  to 
be  developed,  that  he  has  never  given  them  any 
real,  personal  self  to  be  conscious  of,  that  with 
them  body  is  absolutely  the  very  top  of  being.'' 

While  then  there  are  strong  suggestions,  if  not 
positive  evidences  in  nature  of  some  mysterious 
relationship  between  men  and  brutes,  that  rela- 
tionship is  certainly,  as  I  have  already  suggested, 
as  remote  as  that  existing  between  the  flower  and 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  61 

the  soil  out  of  which  it  springs.  The  dull  clod 
has  no  magic  gift  of  self -transfiguration  but  dis- 
plays merely  a  capacity  for  a  passive  yielding 
to  the  plastic  touch  of  some  newly  arrived  vital 
force,  when  out  of  its  well-nigh  shapeless,  scent- 
less, colorless  dust  are  wrought  the  queenly  robes 
and  peerless  perfume  and  richly  crimson  blush  of 
roses. 

The  Investigations  of  science  bring  the  certain 
knowledge  of  the  direct  action  of  the  Divine  will 
still  closer  to  us,  even  within  the  circle  of  our 
own  Individual  experiences.  Sir  George  Mlvart, 
Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  who  stands  In  the 
forefront  of  science,  and  Professor  Rudolf 
Schmid,  President  of  the  Theological  Seminary 
at  Schonthal,  Wurtemburg,  who  stands  In  the 
forefront  of  philosophy,  claim  that  self-conscious 
and  responsibly  free  spirits  must  be  new  and  In- 
dependent existences  transcending  nature,  they 
going  so  far  as  to  state  outright  that  each  hu- 
man soul  is  the  result  of  a  separate  creative  fiat 
of  the  Almighty. 

We  might  enforce  this  their  position  by  re- 
marking that  out  of  the  old  nothing  new  can 
come  except  new  combination,  and  the  soul  Is  be- 
lieved to  be  an  absolutely  new  element  and  not 
simply  a  new  form  of  an  old  one.  This  our  self- 
consciousness  positively  affirms,  and  we  must  Im- 
plicitly rely  on  its  testimony  or  our  whole 
foundation  for  any  belief  is  hopelessly  swept 
away.     It  also  says  that  each  soul  is  an  indlvis- 


62  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

ible  unit,  that  there  cannot  be  transmitted  from 
parent  to  child  any  portion  of  the  ego.  Re- 
semblances may  be,  but  nothing  of  the  child's 
spiritual  entity  has  been  or  can  be  derived  from 
his  progenitors.  Human  souls  are  God's  direct 
gift.  To  the  fashioning  of  each  one  he  has  given 
his  personal  attention.  It  is  only  its  fleshly  cover- 
ings and  its  other  material  environment  he  has  en- 
trusted to  the  care  of  secondary  causes. 

Facts  brought  to  light  by  modem  scientific  In- 
vestigations and  closely  analyzed  by  modem 
scientific  methods,  are  thus  daily  difl^using  and 
deepening  the  belief  among  the  candid  and 
thoughtful  that  the  progress  through  the  ages 
from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  from  amorphic 
matter  to  a  peopled  world,  has  been  something 
more  than  a  methodic,  self-originated,  and  self- 
sustained  evolution  of  elements  held  hidden  In 
matter  from  all  eternity,  that  absolutely  new 
forces  have  from  time  to  time  been  introduced 
from  without  through  direct  creative  fiats  of  a 
personal  will,  the  old  forces,  inside  their  limitations 
being,  as  the  work  progressed,  utilized,  when  found 
available,  simply  as  avenues  for  ushering  in  the 
new. 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 


Ill 

We  now  come  to  the  third  general  division  of 
our  theme,  that  God  not  only  can  effectively  inter- 
fere, either  by  direct  or  indirect  methods,  without 
working  any  disorder,  abrogating  any  law,  or  de- 
stroying any  force ;  and  that  he  not  only  has,  in 
fact,  thus  interfered  again  and  again  in  all  ages 
and  in  countless  matters  of  moment,  but,  further, 
that  it  is  not  only  not  presumptuous,  but  most 
natural  and  reasonable,  for  us  to  expect  that  he 
will  interfere  for  us  individually,  however  insignif- 
icant we  may  at  present  seem  to  be. 

It  is  claimed  by  those  who  controvert  this  posi- 
tion, that  God  has,  as  we  have  already  remarked, 
adopted  broad,  comprehensive  plans,  in  which  he 
has  regard  for  general  interests,  and  not  excep- 
tional cases ;  that  in  these  plans  he  is  as  unyielding 
as  granite;  that  his  interferences  have  been  in  the 
nature  of  creative  fiats,  simply  for  completing  these 
wide-reaching  original  designs ;  that  he  has  no 
time  or  thought  for  individual  cases ;  and  that,  if 
any  one  of  us  would  secure  any  of  the  benefits 
of  the  present  order,  we  must  make  these  plans  a 
careful  study,  and  adjust  ourselves  to  them  as  best 
we  can,  and  not  expect  their  author  to  break  in 
upon  them  and  give  his  personal  attention  to  our 
private,  insignificant  interests.  In  other  words, 
we  must  rely  on  our  own  exertions  for  any  modi- 

63 


64  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

ficatlons  of  our  environments,  must  master  the 
secrets  of  nature,  comply  with  her  laws,  if  we 
would  make  her  forces  our  servitors  and  become 
masters  of  our  circumstances. 

There  is  apparent  warrant  for  such  a  view. 
It  would  seem  as  if  the  individual  were  indeed  lost 
sight  of, —  everything  is  on  so  vast  a  scale,  every 
part  of  this  wonderful  mechanism  of  a  world  is 
so  far-reaching  in  its  results.  The  earth's  whirl 
on  its  axis  brings  day  and  night  for  all ;  the  in- 
clination of  its  axis  to  the  plane  of  its  orbit  and 
its  circuit  round  the  sun  determine  the  change  of 
seasons,  the  rise  and  fall  of  tides,  the  width  of 
zones,  the  force  and  direction  of  the  great  trade- 
winds,  the  character  and  limitations  of  vegetable 
growths,  the  nature  and  habitat  of  the  fishes,  the 
birds  and  the  beasts.  The  sun  ceaselessly  pours 
out  in  every  direction  that  mysterious  influence 
which  we  call  light.  It  indifferently  enters  hovels 
and  marble  halls.  It  comes  through  every  open 
doorway,  every  uncurtained  window,  every  crack 
and  crevice.  It  purples  the  velvet  petal  of  the 
violet  and  fills  it  with  fragrance,  and  afterward, 
with  seemingly  heartless  haste,  rots  that  same 
petal  to  shapeless,  colorless,  odorless  dust  again. 
It  kisses  the  sheltered  valley  into  waving  harvests, 
and  at  the  same  time,  with  other  of  its  rays, 
scorches  the  sand  wastes  with  death's  desolation 
and  silence.  At  one  time  it  darts  in  through  the 
pupil  of  the  eye,  and  with  exquisite  art  transfers 
to  the  retina  the  outer  glory  and  thrills  the  soul 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  65 

with  strange  rapture ;  at  another,  when  the  delicate 
nerves  are  aflame  with  fever,  it  tortures  with  its 
touch,  and  bhsters  and  blackens  that  very  same 
canvas  it  had  with  its  swift  pencil  painted  with 
splendor.  An  atmosphere  miles  in  thickness  com- 
pletely envelops  the  earth.  It  forces  itself  in 
everywhere.  All  gills  and  spiracles  and  lungs 
must  breathe  it,  though  sometimes  it  comes  loaded 
with  poison,  instead  of  balm.  Now  with  gentlest 
zephyr-touch  it  gratefully  fans  the  cheek  of  an 
invalid,  anon  with  the  swift  sweep  of  a  cyclone 
it  levels  a  forest  or  unroofs  a  city.  Water  is  as 
ominipresent  as  air.  The  air  is  indeed  permeated 
with  it,  as  all  substances,  fluids  and  solids,  have 
their  every  particle  encased  in  air.  What  Inter- 
minable leagues  of  tossing  billows,  with  their 
glistening  foam-caps  breaking  over  the  white- 
winged  sea-gulls  of  commerce  as  they  hasten  on 
venturesome  errands  over  the  treacherous  depths, 
some  to  reach  safe  shelter,  it  may  be,  in  distant 
ports,  some  to  fly  wildly  before  an  angry  storm 
and  sink  into  the  opening  jaws  of  a  hungry  sea! 
Fire,  though  not  actually,  yet  potentially,  is  also 
omnipresent.  Even  the  ingredients  of  water  itself 
will  burn,  and  in  the  fierce  flame  which  their 
chemical  union  kindles,  the  metals  and  the  earths, 
even  fire-clay  itself,  will  be  consumed  to  ashes. 
Forests,  grasses  and  peat  bogs,  underlying  beds  of 
coal,  countless  reservoirs  of  oil,  are  ready  for  the 
torch.  Angels  and  demons  of  combustion  are  all 
about  us.     They  stand  in  waiting  on  every  hand, 


66  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

ready  with  their  ruddy  faces  to  beam  kindliest 
cheer  from  our  furnaces  and  chimney  comers  and 
swinging  chandehers,  or  to  blaze  in  mad  fury  amid 
the  crumbling  walls  and  rafters  of  our  homes. 
They  will  cook  for  our  tables,  smelt  our  ores, 
draw  our  trains  of  trade,  turn  the  wheels  in  our 
workshops,  multiply  our  comforts  a  thousandfold, 
or  if  we  are  not  aware,  will,  as  very  fiends  in  their 
wild  work  of  a  night,  change  our  proud  Chicagos 
into  smoldering  ruins.  In  some  far  past  the  whole 
earth  was  but  a  burning  ball,  and  lava  streams  and 
earthquakes  and  smoking  craters  tell  us  that  the 
primal  fires  still  rage  within.  This  elemental 
force  has  been  provided  on  a  grand  scale.  The 
economic  scheme  of  which  it  forms  a  part  embraces 
the  farthest  fixed  star  in  its  infinitude  of  thought. 

Electricity,  the  latest  utilized  force  of  nature, 
has  been  found  to  bear  the  same  stamp  of  uni- 
versality and  to  stand  toward  us  in  this  same 
twofold  relationship.  It  falls  from  the  clouds  in 
death-dealing  thunderbolts ;  it  also  with  deft 
fingers  renders  invaluable  service  in  the  civilizing 
arts  of  life.  It  becomes  the  winged  Mercury  of 
the  mind,  carrying  thought-messages  across  con- 
tinents and  under  seas  with  well-nigh  the  swift- 
ness of  light. 

As  we  thus  study  nature  force  by  force,  at- 
tribute by  attribute,  and  note  this  feature  of 
universality  pervading  all,  this  dual  relationship 
which  each  sustains  of  blessing  or  cursing,  as 
angel    or    devil,    how    powerful    and    painful   the 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  67 

questioning,  whether,  after  all,  It  Is  not  too  true 
that  exceptional  cases,  or  individuals  during  ex- 
ceptional crises,  have  failed  to  enter  as  factors 
into  the  thought  of  God  in  the  dispensations  of 
his  providence ;  whether  individuals  have  not  been 
placed  in  the  midst  of  the  same  possibilities ;  and 
whether  it  does  not  rest  with  each  to  bravely  make 
the  best  of  his  environment,  and  trust  to  his  own 
right  arm  and  stout  heart  to  carry  him  through! 
And,  besides,  is  not  God's  universe  so  wide,  are 
not  his  cares  so  multitudinous  and  complex,  that 
he  has  time  to  make  only  general  classifications, 
establish  wide-reaching  laws,  delegate  great 
secondary  causes,  arrange  his  forces  on  a  scale 
graduated  with  mathematical  precision,  and  set 
them  at  work  in  grooves  unalterably  fixed?  Is 
he  not  necessitated  to  take  simply  a  sweeping 
glance,  to  contemplate  In  the  mass  the  swarming 
myriads  of  beings  evolved  from  the  dust  as  the 
grand  processes  of  life  go  on?  Has  he  not 
thought  it  sufficient  to  establish  the  great  dynas- 
ties of  organized  living  creatures  that  through  the 
ages  have  seemed  to  rise  and  sink  with  the  regu- 
larity of  the  tides  of  the  sea?  We  cannot  even 
number  the  massive  worlds  which  he  has  set  whirl- 
ing through  illimitable  space,  and  which  must 
demand  at  least  his  general  supervision  and  require 
his  constantly  sustaining  power. 

At  first  glance  we  are  apt  to  conclude,  viewing 
the  subject  from  this  standpoint,  that  there  Is  in- 
deed no  Individualizing  in  God's  providences,  no 


68  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

attention  paid  to  detail,  no  more  note  taken  of  the 
units  that  make  up  the  mass  than  the  farmer  takes 
of  the  separate  kernels  of  wheat  which  he  harvests 
from  his  fields.  Here  moves  by  a  cloud  of  locusts 
dense  enough  to  darken  the  sun ;  an  east  wind 
rises  and  greedy  ocean  billows  swallow  them  up. 
A  volcano  bursts,  and  a  Herculaneum  with  its 
thronging  human  life  is  swiftly  buried  in  a  grave 
of  ashes.  There  comes  an  earthquake  shock, 
and  a  Sodom  sinks  into  the  sea ;  a  steamboat  dis- 
aster, a  railroad  accident,  a  visitation  of  cholera,  a 
breaking  out  of  fire,  a  caving  in  of  a  colliery, 
a  whirl  of  a  cyclone,  and  scores  and  hundreds  of 
human  lives  perish  in  an  hour.  Is  it  probable 
that  the  individual  arrests  the  attention  of  the  Al- 
mighty in  the  great  ongoings  of  his  providence? 
Have  you  and  I,  in  our  little  corner,  ever  attracted 
his  attention,  much  more  excited  his  interest? 
Has  his  great  heart  ever  beat  in  love  for  each  one 
of  us?  Has  he  ever  called  us  by  some  dear  name 
and  watched  with  tender  solicitude  the  unfolding 
of  our  powers,  entered  into  sympathy  when  our 
hearts  have  bled  with  bereavement,  or  been  crushed 
with  failure,  or  made  desolate  by  estrangement  or 
unfeeling  neglect?  How  many  hours  in  the  hfe 
history  of  every  one  of  us  are  darkened  by  a  sense 
of  utter  loneliness !  How  many  times  our  hearts 
cry  out  for  the  appreciative  sympathy  of  a  Divine 
companionship !  Oh,  for  that  comforting  as- 
surance which  blessed  Christ's  sorrow-wrung  heart 
when  he  said,  "  And  yet  I  am  not  alone,  for  the 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  69 

Father  is  with  me  "  !  Is  it  presumptuous  for  us 
to  think  that  that  assurance  may  also  be  ours? 
That  it  is  not,  I  beHeve  to  be  the  unmistakable 
teachings,  not  only  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  but 
of  all  animate  and  inanimate  nature  and  of  all 
sound  philosophy. 

The  Scriptures  are  full  of  this  consoling  revela- 
tion. There  is  rarely  a  page  not  illuminated  by 
it.  To  teach  it  was  one  of  the  distinctive  fea- 
tures of  Christ's  ministry.  How  he  delighted  to 
dwell  on  the  brooding  watchfulness  of  the  Father ! 
In  reassuring  his  disciples  he  told  them  that  God, 
"who  gave  his  personal  attention  to  the  clothing 
of  the  grass  and  the  lilies,  and  was  not  so  great 
or  so  busy  as  to  overlook  the  fall  of  even  a  little 
sparrow,  surely  would  keep  loving  and  sleepless 
watch  over  them.  Even  the  hairs  of  their  heads, 
he  confidently  assured  them,  were  all  numbered. 

Such  like  disclosures,  so  many  and  so  explicit, 
throughout  the  books  of  the  Bible,  find  most  abun- 
dant confirmation  in  the  facts  of  science.  The 
geologist  and  the  chemist,  the  botanist  and  the 
naturalist,  have  in  their  separate  departments 
found  phenomena  which  the  Christian  philosopher 
may  boldly  claim  as  incontestable  evidences  of 
God's  sympathetic  presence  with  his  children.  The 
more  deeply  nature  is  searched,  the  more  con- 
vincing the  proofs  of  God's  infinite  painstaking 
for  his  creatures.  His  plans  to  these  ends  have 
evidently  been  thought  out  in  their  minutest  de- 
tails.    We  are  overwhelmed  with  astonishment  as 


70  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

we  see  into  what  small  concerns  he  has  suffered 
his  thoughts  to  enter,  and  out  of  them  by  an  in- 
genuity of  contriving  possible  only  to  a  creator 
of  limitless  resources  has  wrought  results  of  far- 
reaching  import.  No  candid  student  of  nature 
can  fail  of  becoming  profoundly  convinced  that 
there  is  absolutely  nothing,  however  inconspic- 
uous, that  does  not  only  embody  a  divine  thought, 
but  in  some  way  plays  a  part  in  carrying  out  the 
promptings  of  a  divine  love. 

If  any  one  in  his  hours  of  depression  is  haunted 
with  the  feeling  that  he  is  too  insignificant  to  at- 
tract God's  personal  attention,  much  more  be  the 
object  of  his  constant  loving  care,  he  will  find 
himself  wonderfully  reassured  if  he  will  lay  down 
the  telescope  and  take  up  the  microscope,  for  he 
will  soon  see  that  the  fault  is  all  in  himself,  in 
that  he  has  had  a  far  too  meagre  conception  of 
God's  thought-range  and  breadth  of  sympathy. 
Such  an  examination  will  disclose  to  him  that, 
as  a  positive  fact,  God  has  somehow  found  abun- 
dant time,  notwithstanding  the  multiplicity  and 
the  magnitude  of  the  interests  of  his  vast  universe, 
to  give  his  personal  attention  to  the  equipping 
and  provisioning  of  beings  of  infinitesimal  mi- 
nuteness. That  mighty  hand  in  whose  hollow  the 
heavens  are  held,  has  also  sufficient  delicacy  and 
precision  of  touch  to  fashion  the  finely  reticulated 
wing  of  the  ephemeron.  The  same  art-concep- 
tion and  marvelous  skill  that  paint  the  sunset  and 
bend  the  rainbow  have  touched  with  most  brilliant 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  71 

pigment  each  feather  in  the  plumage  of  the  fly. 
The  same  musician  who  has  also  conceived  the 
grand  organ  harmonies  of  ocean  billow  and 
thunderburst,  has  also  adjusted,  part  to  part, 
with  loving  care,  that  sweetest  of  musical  instru- 
ments, the  throat  of  the  skylark,  whose  wild 
rapture  of  song  so  thrilled  the  ethereally  gifted 
Shelley  that  he  immortalized  it  in  verse  as  the 
blithe  spirit-voice  of  the  air. 

God  apparently  shows  not  only  the  same  in- 
finitude of  care,  but  the  same  keen  personal  delight, 
in  his  works  in  the  domain  of  the  minute  as  in 
that  of  the  vast  and  the  mighty.  Look  deeply 
as  we  may  into  nature  with  our  most  powerful 
artificial  lenses,  even  to  the  very  microscope- 
limit,  we  can  detect  no  hasty  oversight,  no  cold 
indifference,  but  exhaustlessness  of  patience  and 
lavishment  of  thought,  and  in  every  detail  of 
each  work  an  absolute  faultlessness  of  finish. 
Illustrations  of  these  comforting  truths  abound 
all  about  us.  The  world  is  full  of  them,  but  I 
have  time  to  cite  only  two  or  three. 

There  is  a  class  of  microscopic  animals,  the 
Diatomaceje,  which  have  existed  in  such  vast 
numbers  that  entire  mountains  have  been  found 
composed  of  their  remains.  The  forms  of  their 
infinitesimal  shells  when  magnified  are  discovered 
to  be  of  most  exquisite  beauty  and  of  every  con- 
ceivable pattern.  "  In  the  same  drop  of  moisture 
there  may  be  some  dozen  or  twenty  forms,  each 
with  its  own  distinctive  pattern,  all  as  constant  as 


72  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

they  are  distinctive,  yet  all  having  apparently  the 
same  habits  and  without  any  perceptible  difference 
of  function."  Neither  sexual  nor  natural  selec- 
tion has,  so  far  as  we  can  discover,  any  governing 
influence  here.  In  these  varied  beauties  are  there 
not  evidences,  which  scientific  theorists  have  so 
far  failed  successfully  to  controvert,  of  God's  giv- 
ing his  personal  attention  to  the  adornment  of 
the  minutest  of  his  creatures,  to  his  conceiving 
and  embodying  in  innumerable  faultless  forms  and 
pleasing  combinations  of  tints  his  conceptions  of 
beauty?  How  this  infinite  painstaking  has  bene- 
fited these  mysterious  specks  of  life,  we  have  no 
means  of  determining.  Perhaps  they  come  and 
go  without  having  the  faintest  intimation  of  the 
symmetries  and  colorings  which  the  Divine  Archi- 
tect and  Artist  has,  by  the  interposition  of  direct 
will  power,  introduced  into  their  calcareous  palace 
homes.  We  cannot  prove  that  it  was  for  their 
especial  benefit  these  patterns  and  paintings  were 
designed.  Perhaps  the  ultimate  purpose  was  the 
aesthetic  culture  of  inquiring  human  souls,  or  it 
may  be  that  other  and  even  higher  ends  will  come 
to  light  in  some  after  age.  Certain  it  is  such 
painstaking  implies  a  purpose,  and  whether  we 
can  discover  it  or  not,  the  fact  brings  with  it, 
to  every  thoughtful  mind,  with  overwhelmingly 
convincing  force,  that  God  is  personally  conver- 
sant with,  and  has  taken  an  active  personal  in- 
terest in,  the  life-furnishings  of  creatures  so 
minute  that  their  individual  forms  are  to  us  ab- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  73 

solutely  invisible  without  the  aid  of  the  micro- 
scope, and  so  low  in  the  scale  of  being  that 
naturalists  are  still  divided  in  opinion  as  to  whether 
they  are  animals  or  plants. 

The  inorganic  world  equally  abounds  in  illustra- 
tive proofs  of  this  same  comforting  truth.  I  will 
select  a  single  one.  The  luminous  flame  that  has 
brightened  human  homes  through  all  civilized 
centuries  is  an  aeriform  chemical  combination  of 
hydrogen  with  oxygen  and  carbon.  The  dif- 
ference in  the  degree  of  inflammability  of  the  first 
two  gases  is  the  cause  of  all  the  illuminating 
properties  of  the  flame,  and  yet  that  diff^erence 
is  so  slight  that  the  times  of  their  ignition  are 
separated  by  a  period  absolutely  imperceptible  to 
our  unaided  senses.  The  hydrogen  takes  fire  a 
very  small  fraction  of  a  second  before  the  carbon, 
and  as  it  unites  with  the  oxygen  of  the  air  it 
lets  go  its  chemical  hold  on  the  carbon,  which  the 
instant  it  is  thus  released  changes  from  a  gas  to 
a  solid,  so  that  into  the  colorless  flame  of  hydrogen 
is  constantly  being  showered  the  finest  carbonic 
dust.  These  minute  particles  become  little  glow- 
ing coals  emitting  a  brilliant  light  just  for  an  in- 
stant and  then,  like  the  hydrogen,  spring  into 
the  chemical  embrace  of  the  all-devouring  oxygen. 
The  infinite  painstaking  here  displayed,  the  deli- 
cate nicety  of  adjustment,  the  critical  attention 
to  the  minutest  details,  are  no  less  astounding 
than  the  world-embracing  beneficence  of  the 
results, 


74  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

The  case  of  the  little  brown  water-spider,  to 
which  brief  allusion  has  already  been  made,  is  the 
only  other  illustration  I  shall  have  space  to  give 
of  God's  personal,  painstaking  care  over  the  mi- 
nutest matters  in  his  kingdom.  In  common  with 
the  numerous  species  of  this  order  of  articulates 
which  abound  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  this  diminu- 
tive creature  has  had  given  to  it  four  pairs  of 
seven-j ointed  legs,  the  last  joint  armed  with  two 
hooks  toothed  like  a  comb,  frontal  poison-fed 
claws,  eight  eyes  and  a  multitude  of  spinnerets 
from  whose  infinitesimal  openings  issues  a  gluti- 
nous liquid  which  the  Instant  the  air  strikes  it 
hardens  Into  threads  Invisible  from  their  fineness 
until  they  are  massed  together  into  a  single,  strong, 
elastic  cable.  But  it  has  furnishings  and  instinc- 
tive Impulses  peculiarly  Its  own.  Its  body  has  a 
thick  covering  of  hair  which  It  has  been  taught  to 
most  curiously  utilize.  Strange  to  say,  this  air- 
breathing  animal  Is  prompted  to  build  its  home  and 
rear  Its  little  ones  on  the  beds  of  streams,  and  the 
devices  by  which  It  has  been  enabled  to  surmount 
what  to  us  would  seem  insuperable  obstacles  may 
well  fill  us  with  admiring  wonder.  It  weaves  a 
diving-bell,  air-tight,  mouth  downward,  and  ties 
it  tightly  to  the  bottom.  Then  coming  to  the 
surface  it  covers  Its  hairy  abdomen  with  fine  web, 
lies  on  its  back  until  all  the  Interstices  between 
the  hairs  and  the  meshes  of  web  are  filled  with  air, 
swims  under  the  bell,  presses  out  Into  It  the  en- 
tangled air,  comes  again  to  the  surface,  and  re- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  75 

peats  the  process,  until  all  the  water  at  first  in 
the  bell  has  been  displaced,  and  the  bell  made 
habitable. 

In  all  this  procedure  the  spider  has  unquestion- 
ably been  guided  by  him  who  equipped  it.  No 
candid  and  appreciative  observer  can  fail  to  note 
this,  for  what,  can  it  be  imagined,  first  determined 
it,  supposing  it  to  be  following  out  its  own  think- 
ing, thus  to  locate  its  nest  under  water,  for  it  has 
no  gills  fitting  it  for  such  a  habitat,  or  how  did 
it  study  out  so  ingenious  a  method  for  making 
such  an  undertaking  possible?  The  inventor  of 
this  bell  must  have  known  that  air  is  lighter 
than  water,  that  it  can  be  mechanically  retained  in 
fine  fabrics,  and  that  when  Introduced  into  an 
inverted  receiver  it  will  crowd  out  the  water,  in- 
stead of  being  absorbed  by  it.  Has  this  spider 
been  so  close  a  student  of  nature  as  to  have  dis- 
covered these  laws  of  physics,  and  Is  it  so  gifted 
an  inventor  as  thus  ingeniously  to  have  applied 
its  knowledge,  without  either  instruction  or  ex- 
perience? This  daintiest  of  palaces  must  have 
been  thought  out  in  all  its  details  before  the  spider 
began  spinning  its  first  thread,  for  the  weaver 
shows  no  hesitancy  and  makes  no  mistake.  It 
must  also  have  been  the  work  of  a  single  mind, 
for  its  parts  are  so  intimately  correlated  that  the 
absence  of  a  single  one  would  not  simply  obscure 
the  conception.  It  would  totally  destroy  it.  There 
must  be  either  perfection  or  flat  failure.  This 
alternative  was  presented  to  the  first  spider  of  the 


76  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

species.  I  would  like  to  show,  had  I  time,  how 
this  little  creature  is  also  equally  blessed  with 
Divine  guidance  as  to  how  and  where  it  shall  de- 
posit its  eggs,  how  enwrap  them  in  clusters  with 
silken  cocoons  for  protection  and  warmth,  when 
and  how  to  release  the  tiny  babies  from  their 
coverings  and  transport  and  feed  them  when  first 
they  come,  as  they  are  sure  to  do,  in  swarming 
and  hungry  companies. 

The  equally  marvelous  prescience  and  skill  dis- 
played by  all  instinct  guided  creatures  and  their 
equally  marvelous  equipment  for  their  work,  af- 
ford us  illustrative  proofs  without  number  of 
God's  most  intimate  acquaintance  with,  and  loving 
care  for,  the  momentary  interests  of  earth's  speech- 
less, soulless,  perishing  myriads.  Neither  their 
implements  nor  their  skill  can  be  accounted  for 
as  the  slow  outcome  of  stem  experience,  for  their 
instinctive  promptings  are  followed  blindly,  and 
their  wisdom  and  skill  antedate  experience,  and 
are  independent  of  the  aids  of  instruction  or  of 
any  working  model.  To  the  progenitors  at  least 
of  every  animal  species,  there  has  come  a  direct 
divine  impressment  and  informing.  New  wants 
with  correspondingly  new  implements  and  new  in- 
stinctive impulses  issued  from  the  creative  will  of 
the  Almighty.  Provision  was  doubtless  made  at 
the  incoming  of  each  species  for  the  transmission, 
through  the  laws  of  heredity,  of  such  traits  as 
should   constitute  its   distinctive  endowment,   and 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  77 

thus   a  general  supervision  over  each  species   in- 
stituted. 

But  still  more  specific  provision  seems  to  have 
been  made  to  cover  exceptional  necessities,  to  an- 
swer the  demands  of  exceptional  crises  in  the  in- 
dividual lives  of  the  seemingly  most  insignificant. 
There  appears  to  have  been  left  a  certain  latitude 
of  modification  and  amendment  of  instinctive 
promptings.  As  I  have  already  remarked,  ani- 
mals unquestionably  possess,  in  common  with  us, 
not  only  blindly  followed  instincts,  but  sense-per- 
ception, association  of  objects  and  ideas,  automatic 
attention,  involuntary  memory,  indeliberate  voli- 
tion, reproductive  imagination,  sympathetic  emo- 
tion, and  emotional  expression.  Though  the 
phenomena  of  their  thought-life  may  be  classed 
under  these  lov/er  forms  of  mentality,  though  they 
may  never  rise  to  deliberative,  abstract,  introver- 
tive  thinking,  may  never  attain  to  self-conscious- 
ness, having  no  self  to  be  conscious  of,  may  never 
have  the  clear  light  of  reason  or  ever  exercise  a 
responsibly  free  choice,  yet  they  do  seem  to  have 
had  some  means  provided  for  supplementing  in- 
stinct in  those  peculiar  emergencies  for  which  no 
general  provision  through  instinct  could  be  se- 
cured. This  clearly  evidences  to  us  that  God's 
providential  care,  even  over  the  lowliest,  extends 
beyond  the  segregated  mass  that  constitutes  the 
species  to  each  separate  individual  In  it,  and  even 
to  that  Individual's  exceptional  needs.  The  think- 
ing here  displayed,  though  outside  the  circle  of 


78  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

instinct  proper,  will  still  be  found,  on  final  anal- 
ysis, to  be  God's,  and  not  theirs. 

To  receive  the  full  force  of  this  comforting 
truth,  we  must  keep  in  mind  that  all  this  loving 
care  is  taken  for  creatures  of  a  day,  who  are  here 
hemmed  in  by  simple  sense,  and  who  have  promise 
of  no  tomorrow;  and  we  must  also  keep  in  mind, 
what  science  has  not  only  conclusively  demon- 
strated, but  illumined  and  glorified  by  its  extensive 
researches,  that  man  is  a  microcosm,  the  crown  of 
creation,  the  consummate  flower  of  all  the  ages, 
that  it  was  for  him  this  world  was  provided  with 
its  mineral  deposits,  rock-quarries,  and  coal  beds, 
with  its  vast  reservoirs  of  oil,  its  dense  forests  and 
waving  grain  and  grasses,  with  its  flocks  and  herds, 
with  its  mighty  elemental  forces,  with  its  flower- 
petals,  its  arching  rainbows,  and  its  painted  skies. 

It  was  to  secure  for  him,  nature's  sccptcred 
king,  a  fitting  environment,  that  all  the  mighty 
processes  of  evolution  had  been  carried  on  through 
all  the  untold  geologic  eons  of  forgotten  time,  and 
it  was  for  him  earth  was  fitted  up,  not  as  a  per- 
manent home,  as  the  all-in-all  of  his  existence, 
but  simply  as  a  first  year's  training  school  for 
powers  which,  though  barely  budding  now,  have 
in  them  the  promise  and  the  potency  of  an  endless 
life  and  of  a  divine  likeness.  A  single  deathless  hu- 
man soul  outweighs  in  worth  ten  thousand  worlds 
of  lower  sentient  life. 

The  now  widely  studied,  though  still  very  imper- 
fectly    understood,     sub-conscious     mind     widens 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  79 

vastly  our  conceptions  of  the  exalted  and  inex- 
haustible resources  of  the  human  spirit  and 
furnishes  new  and  unmistakable  evidences  of  its 
immortality.  Recent  researches  in  psychology 
reveal  to  us  that  this  spirit  in  this  submerged 
realm  never  tires,  never  sleeps,  that  it  is  far- 
reaching  in  its  activities  even  when  the  wearied 
bodily  organism  is  wrapped  in  profoundest 
slumber,  that  it  ceaselessly  carries  on  the  vital 
chemistries  of  the  body,  building  up  and  main- 
taining its  bony  framework  and  many  different 
tissues  out  of  the  mass  of  crude  material  fur- 
nished for  its  fashioning,  that  it  lifts  the  curtains 
of  the  future  in  premonitory  dreams,  that  no  idea 
or  incident  once  made  known  to  it  ever  fades  from 
its  memory,  that  by  some  subtile  system  of  mental 
telegraphy  it  sends  its  messages  out  over  conti- 
nents and  rolling  seas,  that  it  even  measures  vast 
distances  in  projecting  its  personal  presence  in 
times  of  mortal  stress  as  if  transported  on  the 
wings  of  angels,  that  it  reaches  out  with  clear 
vision  and  with  dynamic  power  without  the  inter- 
vention and  beyond  the  limits  of  the  body,  that 
it  banishes  under  the  laws  of  suggestion  many 
forms  of  disease  almost  instantly  even  in  cases 
in  which  skilled  physicians  have  met  with  dis- 
couraging failure,  that  it  has  filled  every  depart- 
ment of  human  thought  and  activity  with  the  in- 
explicable dazzling  splendor  of  the  works  of 
genius. 

In   reading  authentic   accounts    of   its   achieve- 


80  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

ments  it  is  hard  for  us  to  realize  that  we  are  not 
in  fairy  land,  that  there  are  not  being  rehearsed 
to  us  extravaganzas  equal  to  those  in  the  Arabian 
Nights'  Entertainments.  But  the  more  we  search 
the  carefully  prepared  scientific  records  of  its 
achievements,  astounding  though  they  are,  the 
more  we  are  convinced  of  their  verity  and  their 
deep  significance.  We  have  here  at  hand  an 
Aladdin's  magical  lamp  that  can  uncover  to  us 
hidden  treasures  of  priceless  riches  and  place  at 
our  bidding  slave  genii  of  wonder-working  power. 
But  while  the  evidence  shows  us  conclusively 
that  such  marvelous  capacities  have  been  placed 
in  our  keeping  yet  it  also  shows  that  they  have 
been  reserved  in  large  measure  for  some  other  life 
beyond,  from  the  very  fact  that  only  under  ex- 
ceptional supernormal  conditions  are  occasional 
glimpses  of  them  now  possible,  that  only  very 
partial  use  is  placed  as  yet  within  our  reach  and 
that  they  are  hung  about  with  such  a  cloud  of 
impenetrable  mystery.  To  its  magical  workings 
in  the  field  of  therapeutics  we  have  already  directed 
attention.  It  will  suffice,  perhaps,  for  our  present 
purpose  to  call  attention  more  especially  to  but  a 
single  one  of  its  other  manifestations,  the  one  last 
mentioned,  that  of  the  conceptual,  creative  powers 
of  genius.  Here  we  have  a  glimpse  at  least,  and 
can  form  perhaps  an  approximate  estimate  of 
God's  priceless  gifts  to  us  and  of  his  far-reaching 
designs  concerning  us  during  the  coming  endless 
years,  and  may  be  able  to  dismiss  all  further  doubt 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  81 

of  our  being  worthy  in  his  eyes  of  unremittent 
care  during  this  the  formative  first  period  of  our 
existence. 

The  wide  differences  among  men  in  the  degree 
of  endowment,  apparent  to-day,  are,  for  our  com- 
fort be  it  spoken,  but  the  temporary  accidents  of 
perishable,  inadequately  equipped  bodies,  and  of 
a  temporary  world-environment. 

Difference  in  hindy  without  conferring  pre- 
cedence in  point  of  worth,  but  simply  promoting 
and  assuring  pleasurable  variety,  will  probably 
always  remain,  but  differences  in  degree  will  de- 
pend upon  the  future  determining  power  of  the 
human  will,  for  each  incarnate  spirit  is  one  of 
God's  immortals,  in  whose  germinal  nature  is 
wrapped  up  the  incalculable  possibilities  of  an  end- 
less growth. 

The  distinguishing  characteristics  of  genius 
are  spontaneity,  power  to  create,  sudden  and  un- 
anticipated revelations  of  the  deepest  secrets  in 
nature  and  life,  bright,  unbidden  concepts  in 
mathematics,  in  music,  poetry,  sculpture  and  paint- 
ing, in  oratorical  achievement,  in  military  strategy, 
in  farseeing  statesmanship,  in  every  department 
of  thought  and  action. 

The  uneducated  boy  Colbum,  by  processes  of 
computation  which  he  never  could  explain,  which 
were  as  much  a  mystery  to  him  as  to  every  one  else, 
would  give  the  cube  roots  of  the  largest  numbers 
offered  him  almost  instantly,  with  unvarying  ac- 
curacy, without  pencil  or  paper,  seemingly  with- 


82  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

out  any  mental  effort.  His  mind  through  some 
unknown  automatic  action,  through  some  intimate 
acquaintance  with  the  laws  of  numbers,  too  pro- 
found for  our  fathoming,  instantly  reached  results 
which  in  the  ordinary  way  would  require  long, 
tedious,  complicate  calculations. 

I  distinctly  recall  a  case  cited  in  one  of  my 
college  text  books  on  mental  science  of  a  distin- 
guished professor  who,  puzzling  one  evening  with- 
out avail  until  bed  time  over  the  solution  of  a 
problem  in  higher  mathematics,  at  last  in  a  fit  of 
discouragement  threw  his  paper  aside  and  retired 
to  rest.  In  the  middle  of  the  night  his  wife  being 
awakened  by  some  noise  in  the  room,  discovered 
that  her  husband,  though  still  sound  asleep  had 
returned  to  his  desk.  After  a  time  he  went  back 
to  bed  with  his  sleep  still  undisturbed.  In  the 
morning  to  the  astonishment  of  them  both  they 
found  the  whole  solution  In  all  its  stages  carefully 
written  out  in  the  dark  on  the  papers  left  lying 
open  on  his  desk.  He  never  afterward  could  gain 
the  slightest  recollection  of  ever  having  during 
the  night  raised  his  head  from  the  pillow. 

The  author,  the  artist,  the  musical  composer,  all 
creative  geniuses,  oftentimes  confess  that  they 
cannot  explain  how  their  best  works  are  produced ; 
that  they  can  never  by  directly  willing  it  attain 
to  the  same  degree  of  creative  freedom ;  that  the 
divine  afflatus  is  at  times  very  coy,  then  again  it 
comes  unbidden  and  is  excessively  domineering  and 
persistent  until  the  record  is  made ;  that  in  inspired 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  SB 

moments  some  power,  apparently  outside  them- 
selves, gains  control ;  that  the  clearest  vision  of 
intricate  situations  and  the  most  surprising  facility 
of  expression  are  suddenly  placed  at  their  disposal, 
they  little  dreaming  that  up  from  the  fathomless 
depths  of  their  sub-conscious  being  come  these 
haunting  phantoms  and  these  most  surprising 
powers. 

Helen  Hunt  Jackson,  whom  Emerson  pro- 
nounced one  of  the  best,  if  not  the  best,  poets 
America  has  produced,  in  describing  to  a  friend 
the  origin  and  the  writing  out  of  Ramona,  that 
superb  Indian  story  which  was  the  consummate 
flower  of  her  genius,  and  on  which  her  fame  will 
ultimately  rest,  wrote,  that  for  three  or  four  years 
she  had  longed  to  embody  in  a  telling  fiction  her 
conception  of  the  red-man's  claim  upon  the  white 
man  who  was  heartlessly  crowding  him  off  from 
his  hunting  grounds,  but  that  she  had  hopelessly 
brooded  over  the  theme,  being  utterly  unable  to 
formulate  a  plot,  or  conceive  of  the  proper  local 
coloring  for  background  "  until,"  as  she  relates, 
"  one  October  morning  before  I  was  wide  awake 
the  whole  plot  flashed  into  mj'^  mind  —  not  a  vague 
one  either, —  the  whole  story  just  as  It  stands  to- 
day, in  less  than  five  minutes,  as  if  some  one  spoke 
It.  I  sprang  up,  went  to  my  husband's  room  and 
told  him.  I  was  half  frightened.  From  that 
time  till  I  came  here  It  haunted  me,  becoming 
more  and  more  vivid.  I  was  Impatient  to  get  at 
it.     I  wrote  the  first  of  it  December  First.     As 


84  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

soon  as  I  began  to  write  it  seemed  impossible  to 
write  fast  enough.  In  spite  of  myself  I  wrote 
faster  than  I  would  write  a  letter.  I  write  two 
to  three  thousand  words  in  a  morning  and  I  can- 
not help  it.  It  racks  me  like  a  struggle  with  an 
outside  power.  I  cannot  help  being  superstitious 
about  it.  I  have  never  done  half  the  amount  of 
work  in  the  same  time.  Ordinarily  it  would  be  a 
simple  impossibility.  Twice  since  beginning  it  I 
have  broken  down  utterly  for  a  while,  with  a  cold 
ostensibly,  but  with  great  nervous  prostration 
added. 

"  What  I  have  to  endure  in  holding  myself  away 
from  it,  the  afternoons  I  am  compelled  to  be  in 
the  house,  no  words  can  tell.  What  do  you 
think  ?  Am  I  possessed  of  a  demon  ?  Is  it  a  freak 
of  mental  disturbance  or  what  ?  " 

It  is  related  of  this  gifted  author  that  during 
her  last  illness  immediately  on  waking  one  morn- 
ing a  new  exquisitely  finished  poem  monopolized 
her  thoughts  and  pressed  for  utterance.  She  re- 
cited it  to  her  attending  physician  when  he  called, 
and  asked  for  an  explanation  as  to  its  origin,  ap- 
parently surmising  it  to  be  a  premonition,  a 
masked  prophecy,  of  her  fast  approaching  fate. 

Longfellow  has  kindly  lifted  the  curtain  for 
us  as  to  the  origin  of  some  of  his  poems.  "  The 
Arrow  and  the  Song "  came  into  his  mind  he 
tells  us  instantaneously.  "  My  Lost  Youth  "  oc- 
curred to  him  in  the  night  after  a  day  of  pain 
and  was  written  out  the  next  morning.     On  an- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  85 

other  occasion  at  midnight  he  was  sitting  by  his 
fire  when  suddenly  it  was  suggested  to  him  to  write 
the  Ballad  of  the  Schooner  Hesperus  "  which,'* 
he  says,  "  I  accordingly  did.  Then  I  went  to  bed 
but  could  not  sleep.  New  thoughts  were  running 
in  my  mind  and  I  got  up  and  added  them  to  the 
ballad.  It  was  three  by  the  clock  when  I  had 
finished.  I  then  went  to  bed  and  fell  asleep.  The 
poem  hardly  cost  me  an  effort.  It  did  not  come 
into  my  mind  by  lines  but  by  stanzas."  He  had  a 
similar  experience  in  writing  "  The  Beleaguered 
City  "  and  "  The  Lock  of  Edenhall." 

Rev.  Dr.  Stowe  recently  related  in  his  lecture 
on  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  " ;  "  My  mother  had  not 
the  faintest  idea  what  she  would  write  about  until 
one  day  she  was  in  church  and  suddenly  the  whole 
scene  of  Uncle  Tom  and  Legree  floated  before  her 
eyes.  She  broke  into  a  fit  of  uncontrollable  weep- 
ing. When  she  reached  home  she  went  up  to  her 
room  and  immediately  wrote  out  that  familiar 
chapter,  *  The  Death  of  Uncle  Tom,'  "  over  which, 
we  may  add,  the  whole  reading  world  has  since 
shed  many  a  sympathetic  tear. 

Coleridge's  "  Kubla  Khan  "  sprang  into  being 
during  the  hours  of  profound  sleep.  What  has 
been  preserved  is  but  the  merest  fragment  of  his 
vision,  for  while  eagerly  writing  down  the  stanzas 
as  he  recalled  them  he  was  suddenly  summoned 
out  on  business  and  detained  for  over  an  hour,  and 
on  his  return  he  found  that  only  eight  or  ten 
scattering  lines,  out  of  the  two  or  three  hundred 


86  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

which  he  was  confident  had  been  thus  composed 
without  conscious  effort,  would  answer  to  his 
summons.  This  dream-bom  poetic  rendering  of 
his  vision  had  fled  from  him  forever. 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  in  his  paper  on 
"  Dreams,"  tells  us  that  even  his  hours  of  sleep 
were  thronged  with  the  little  Brownies,  breathing 
out  their  loves  and  hates,  which  in  his  pages  he 
has  so  vividly  limned  into  life.  Indeed,  then  it 
was  in  these  very  hours  his  creative  faculties 
wrought  with  greatest  intensity,  with  most  over- 
mastering power.  Dickens  could  not  keep  back 
the  throng  of  strange  folk  that  peopled  his  im- 
agination. They  would  come  apparently  without 
his  bidding.  He  would  listen  with  rapt  attention 
to  their  sprightly  conversations  as  if  they  were 
palpable  personages  in  the  real  world  outside  him- 
self instead  of  the  airy  nothings  to  which  he  had 
given  a  habitation  and  a  name. 

It  is  said  of  Schubert  that  "  year  after  year  he 
wrote  music  of  indescribable  beauty  in  such  enor- 
mous quantities  that  but  for  the  dates  on  the  manu- 
scripts we  could  not  credit  the  account  of  his 
biographers.  He  wrote  because  when  his  genius 
inspired  him  he  could  not  refrain.  His  pieces 
were  produced  by  hundreds  and  with  a  rapidity 
bordering  on  the  miraculous,  seven  or  eight  in  a 
day.  He  never  repeated  himself.  Every  produc- 
tion was  the  result  of  a  new  inspiration,  committed 
to  paper  at  the  moment  of  conception,   and  all 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  87 

received  worthy  treatment  and  bore  the  unmistak- 
able imprint  of  genius." 

Blind  Tom,  having  no  capacity  whatever  for 
training,  whose  objective  mind  was  an  idiotic 
blank,  astonished  the  world  by  his  exhibition  of 
a  wonderful  gift,  being  able  to  accurately  repro- 
duce the  most  difficult  classical  compositions  on 
the  keyboard  of  the  piano,  and  even  to  improvise 
at  will  productions  of  remarkable  excellence. 

At  the  opening  of  the  last  century  Toussaint 
d'Overture,  the  Haytian  Liberator,  who  had  been 
a  slave  until  fifty,  astonished  the  world  by  his 
energy  and  matchless  genius  in  battle. 

The  English  were  driven  from  every  strong- 
hold, twenty-eight  Spanish  forts  in  four  days,  fell 
before  his  advancing  columns ;  he  maintained 
against  an  allied  enemy  long  lines  of  Impregnable 
defense,  successfully  besieged  St.  Mark  and  closed 
the  campaign  by  English  capitulation  and  the  re- 
treat of  the  Spanish  forces.  Napoleon,  the  First 
Consul  of  France,  fearful  of  the  rising  splendor 
of  the  negro  chieftain  sent  against  the  Island 
thirty  thousand  veterans  and  upwards  of  sixty  war 
ships,  dreaming  of  easy  triumphs  and  the  re- 
enslavement  of  a  free  people.  His  generals  long 
drilled  in  war  and  fresh  from  conquests  on  the 
continent,  here  at  last  found  a  master.  In  the 
conflict  that  followed  ten  thousand  of  Napoleon's 
trained  soldiery  were  slain,  and  the  disordered 
remnant  of  his  defeated  forces  fell  an  easy  prey 


88  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

to  the  galling  fire  of  tlie  mountain  marksmen. 
Only  by  cowardly  intrigue,  by  treacherous  appeal 
to  the  most  generous  impulses,  by  empty  profes- 
sions of  friendship  and  by  lying  promises  of  liberal 
rule,  did  this  ambitious,  cold-blooded  despot  of 
France  at  last  prevail. 

Toussaint  could  have  truthfully  said  in  the 
beautiful  words  of  the  Eastern  fable,  "  I  was  but 
common  clay  until  roses  were  planted  in  me." 

Sir  William  R.  Hamilton  evolved  the  intricate 
conception  of  the  invention  of  quarternions  while 
walking  with  Lady  Hamilton  in  the  streets  of 
Dublin,  the  flash  of  discovery  coming  to  him  just 
as  he  was  approaching  the  Brougham  Bridge. 

Mozart  had  the  aria  of  the  beautiful  quintette 
in  the  "  Magic  Flute  "  revealed  to  him  while  play- 
ing a  game  of  billiards  and  seemed  prepared  for 
such  occasional  influxes  of  musical  ideas  by  carry- 
ing a  note  book  for  their  instant  record.  When 
he  was  but  thirteen  years  old  he  composed  an 
opera  and  directed  it.  He  wrote  of  himself,  "  If 
one  has  the  spirit  of  a  composer  he  writes  because 
he  cannot  help  himself.  Whence  and  how  my 
ideas  come,  I  know  not  nor  can  I  force  them. 
Those  that  please  me  I  retain.  They  fire  my  soul, 
the  subject  enlarges,  becomes  methodized  and  de- 
fined, and  the  whole,  though  long,  stands  almost 
complete  and  finished  in  my  mind  so  that  I  can 
survey  it  like  a  fine  picture  or  a  beautiful  statue 
at  a  glance.  Nor  do  I  hear  in  my  imagination 
the  parts  successively  but  as  it  were  all  at  once," 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  89 

"  An  inventor  suddenly  conceived  the  proper 
way  of  constructing  a  prism  for  a  binocular 
microscope,  a  problem  which  he  had  long  thought 
of  and  abandoned,  while  he  was  reading  an  un- 
interesting novel." 

The  late  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,  in  describing 
the  way  in  which  that  majestic,  inspired  Battle 
Hymn  of  hers  happily  characterized  by  another  as 
a  "  swinging,  splendid  lyric,  the  war  song  of  mih- 
tant  righteousness,"  sang  itself  into  being  while 
she  slept,  remarks,  "  The  road  was  so  filled  with 
soldiers  that  our  return  from  the  parade  ground 
to  the  city  was  very  tedious,  and  to  pass  the  time 
away  we  sang  *  John  Brown's  Body.'  Some  of 
the  marching  regiments  took  it  up  and  it  was 
passed  along  the  road  until  the  echoes  reverberated 
for  miles.  My  pastor  asked  me  why  I  did  not 
put  the  spirit  of  '  John  Brown's  body  lies 
a-mold'ring  in  the  grave '  into  some  graceful  and 
expressive  words.  I  told  him  I  had  tried.  One 
morning  soon  after  that  I  awoke  suddenly  about 
daylight  and  the  lines  I  wanted  were  running 
vaguely  through  my  mind.  I  arose  and  wrote 
them  down.  They  were  published  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  and  the  editor  named  them  '  The  Battle 
Hymn  of  the  Republic'  " 

The  astounding  achievements  of  this  secretly 
working  sub-conscious  self  are  almost  past  belief. 
They  are  so  significant  and  suggestive  in  the 
present  discussion  I  cannot  refrain  from  adding 
two  or  three  more  to  the  number  already  recited. 


90  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

W.  Poole,  F.  R.  S.,  in  describing  how  Bidder 
could  determine  mentally  the  logarithm  of  any 
number  to  seven  or  eight  places  says,  "  He  had 
almost  a  miraculous  power  of  seeing,  as  it  were, 
intuitively  what  factors  would  divide  any  large 
number,  not  a  prime.  Thus  if  he  were  given  the 
number  17,861  he  would  instantly  remark  it  was 
337  X  53.  He  could  not,  he  said,  explain  how 
he  did  this,  it  seemed  a  natural  instinct  to  him." 
Bidder  himself  remarks,  "  Whenever  I  feel  called 
upon  to  make  use  of  the  stores  of  my  mind  they 
seem  to  arise  with  the  rapidity  of  lightning.'* 
Prof.  Safford,  Mondeux  Prolongeau  and  others  re- 
late similar  experiences.  Buxton  would  talk  freely 
while  mentally  performing  his  intricate  calcula- 
tions, that  being  no  molestation  or  hindrance  to 
him. 

Sir  John  Herschel's  Experience  in  Geometrical- 
Spectres  led  him  to  remark  that  "  we  have  evidence 
of  a  thought,  an  intelligence  working  within  our 
organization  distinct  from  our  ordinary  per- 
sonality." 

M.  Sully  Prudhomme,  at  once  a  psychologist 
and  a  poet,  says,  "  I  have  sometimes  suddenly  un- 
derstood a  geometrical  demonstration  made  to  me 
a  year  previously  without  having  in  any  way 
directed  thereto  any  attention  or  will.  It  seems 
that  the  mere  spontaneous  ripening  of  the  con- 
ceptions which  the  lectures  had  implanted  in  my 
brain   had   brought    about   within   me   this    novel 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  91 

grasp  of  the  proof.  A  like  personal  history  is 
given  by  Arago  and  Cardillac. 

George  Sand,  the  famous  French  novelist,  tells 
us  that  "  in  the  act  of  writing  she  felt  a  continu- 
ous and  effortless  flow  of  ideas,  sometimes  with 
and  sometimes  without  an  extemalization  of  the 
characters  who  spoke  in  her  romances."  Mrs. 
Gamp,  Dickens'  greatest  creation,  persistently 
thrust  her  voluble  personality  upon  his  attention 
especially  in  church  when  he  was  in  the  act  of 
worship. 

Very  recently  Professor  W.  Bert  Reese  a  Ger- 
man resident  of  New  York  City,  exhibited,  under 
exceptionally  guarded  conditions,  powers  of  clair- 
voyant sight  and  mind  reading  in  the  presence 
of  such  trained  investigators  as  the  famed  in- 
ventor Thomas  A.  Edison,  a  pronounced  skeptic 
as  to  immortality  and  the  existence  of  a  soul,  and 
of  Dr.  Wm.  H.  Thompson,  author  of  the  book 
entitled  "  Brain  and  Personality,"  and  others  alike 
eminent  in  intellectual  circles.  It  was  the  unani- 
mous verdict  that  the  Professor  actually  possessed 
these  marvelous  powers  which  to  them  were  utterly 
inexplicable,  Edison  simply  placed  the  strange 
phenomena  in  the  same  category  with  the  feats 
of  mathematical,  musical,  mechanical,  and  literary 
prodigies,  as  results,  all  of  them,  of  some  super- 
development  of  senses  and  gifts  that  will  some  day 
in  the  further  evolution  of  the  race  come  out  into 
the  open.     But  as  I  have  already  remarked,  does 


92  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

not  the  very  fact  that  thus  far  through  all  the 
past  ages  they  and  other  occult  powers  have  been 
largely  the  product  of  abnormal  states,  rarely, 
very  rarely,  tractable  and  serviceable  in  this 
present  life,  only  occasionally  and  very  imperfectly 
displayed,  thus  dimly  intimating  that  there  are 
hidden  away,  somewhere  in  some  way,  vast  stores 
of  mental  wealth,  with  little  or  no  advance  in  the 
unraveling  of  their  mystery,  does  not  this  fact 
warrant  us  rather  in  the  belief  that  they  are  being 
purposely  held  in  reserve  as  promises  and  proph- 
ecies of  some  other  larger,  fuller,  freer  life  beyond? 

I  will  not  further  multiply  instances  of  the 
magical  workings  of  this  submerged  self,  although 
they  brighten  every  age  of  human  history  and  are 
to  be  met  with  in  every  walk  in  human  life. 

I  would  not  have  given  as  many  as  I  have  were 
I  not  especially  impressed  with  their  deep  signifi- 
cance and  solicitous  to  place  upon  them  the  em- 
phasis which  is  their  due,  for  right  here  in  this 
very  realm  of  the  sub-conscious  self,  this  mystery- 
shrouded  border-land  of  the  spirit,  the  birth-place 
of  intuitions,  we  cannot  help  but  see  of  what  price- 
less worth  is  every  separate  human  soul,  we  can  all 
but  catch  the  sound  of  angel-voices,  we  come  into 
closest  touch  with  the  Infinite. 

Having  described  at  some  length  in  my  answer, 
elsewhere  to  the  question,  "  Was  Christ  Divine?  " 
the  discoveries  and  conclusions  of  science  as  to 
man's  place  in  nature,  and  having  no  space  here 
for  its   general   discussion,   I  will   content  myself 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  93 

with  the  simple  statement  that  the  more  profoundly 
phenomena  have  been  studied  by  scientists  and 
scientific  philosophers,  the  more  clearly  and  glori- 
ously has  it  been  revealed  that  God  has  been  busied 
through  untold  ages  in  preparing  for  man's  ad- 
vent, that  man  has  been  the  grand  goal  of  his 
endeavor,  the  ultima  Thule  of  his  creative  thought 
on  this  planet ;  that  all  this  prolonged  preparation 
could  not  have  been  merely  to  render  comfortable 
a  short-lived  and  low-planed  animal  existence,  that 
this  patient  approach  could  not  have  been  to  a 
consummation  so  inconsequential  and  unworthy, 
but  that  he  for  whom  the  centuries  have  been  so 
long  waiting  and  to  whose  coming  they  have  been 
pointing  with  prophetic  finger,  who  fulfills  the 
types,  completes  the  prophecies,  wears  the  crown, 
surely  was  not  bom  to  die ;  that  he  who  has 
proved  himself  capable  of  unraveling  the  intri- 
cacies and  following  the  vast  sweep  of  the  Divine 
thought  as  is  evidenced  by  his  discoveries  in  science, 
his  classifications  of  knowledge,  his  advancement 
in  the  arts,  his  rapidly  approaching  universal 
mastery  and  ingenious  utilization  of  nature's 
forces,  his  unconscious  duplicating  of  God's 
thought-processes  as  incorporated  in  the  lives  of 
the  world's  silent,  instinct-guided  workers  and  in 
the  mechanism  of  their  bodies ;  he  who  has  proved 
himself  capable  of  so  apprehending  the  spirit  of 
God's  vast  creative  plans  as  to  be  able  to  become 
his  sub-creator,  noticeably  multiplying  and  im- 
proving the  products  of  vegetable  and  animal  life, 


94.  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

making  the  waters  swarm,  turning  deserts  Into 
gardens,  developing  the  crude  possibilities  of  un- 
tamed nature ;  he  whose  whole  being  can  thrill 
with  harmonies  of  sound,  of  form,  and  of  color, 
and  who  has  not  only  reproduced  them  but  carried 
them  to  grand  exaltations  in  oratorio  and  sculp- 
tured marble,  speaking  canvas,  cathedral  pile,  and 
landscape  gardening,  and  has  laid  all  matter  and 
even  all  force  under  tribute  to  his  aesthetic  tastes ; 
he  who  can  thus  enter  with  keen  appreciative  zest 
and  assimilative  capacity  into  the  thought-life  of 
God ;  and,  finally,  he  who  has  had  entrusted  to  him, 
what  far  transcend  everything  beside,  the  responsi- 
ble gifts  of  moral  discernment  and  liberty  of 
choice,  out  of  which  alone  character  can  come, 
surely  must  have  reached,  in  point  of  privilege, 
the  very  top  of  being,  and  must  possess  in  living 
germ  the  very  attributes  of  God  himself,  with  all 
the  golden  possibilities  of  growth  in  God's  eternal 
years. 

When  we  thus  attempt  to  measure  the  worth  and 
dignity  of  man,  we  must  also  keep  in  mind  that 
each  individual  soul  comes  fresh  from  the  Creator, 
and  is  not  simply  the  product  of  processes  of 
evolution  begun  in  some  far  age  and  perpetuated 
by  secondary  causes  which  God  has  long  since 
ceased  to  superintend  and  to  whose  general  out- 
come alone  he  has  ever  directed  attention.  The 
soul's  environment,  its  body  and  its  wider  sur- 
roundings are,  indeed,  the  result  of  such  processes, 
but  each  soul  is  In  itself  a  unique  spiritual  entity. 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  95 

bearing  the  imprint  of  a  distinct  personal  purpose, 
and  constituting  the  embodiment  of  some  cherished 
ideal,  some  fond  anticipation,  some  sacred  love, 
right  out  of  the  very  throbbing  heart  of  God. 

The  drift  of  the  centuries  has  been  to  an  ever 
more  complete  development  of  individuality;  it 
has  been  a  progress  from  homogeneity  to  hetero- 
geneity ;  such  has  been  the  history  of  evolution 
from  the  dawn  of  time,  as  Spencer,  Huxley,  and 
thinkers  of  that  school  have,  through  learned  and 
brilliant  treatises,  informed  the  world. 

It  is  not  the  great  mass  as  such  that  excites 
God's  loving  interest,  but  the  individualized  units 
in  it.  It  was  not  the  creating  and  provisioning 
of  a  mighty  human  race  simply  as  such  that  was 
the  ultima  Thule  of  his  thought,  but  the  develop- 
ing of  the  distinctive  traits  of  individual  souls, 
and  the  establishing  with  them  at  the  last,  after 
discipline  has  done  its  work,  intimate  and  eternal 
companionship.  To  think  that  God  ever  pro- 
posed to  stop  short  of  this  would  be  to  belittle 
his  plan,  to  belie  the  teachings  of  all  sound 
science  and  philosophy,  leave  the  grand  scheme 
of  evolution  incomplete,  and  judge  of  God  as  be- 
ing coldly  self-contained,  craving  no  sympathy, 
contentedly  sitting  apaii;  in  eternal  isolation, 
wholly  unresponsive  to  the  tender  pleadings  of  his 
children. 

When  we  discover  that  God  has  given  his  per- 
sonal attention  and  poured  out  a  wealth  of  invent- 
ive thought  on  every  particle  of  dust,  on   every 


96  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

minutest  fibre  of  every  leaflet,  on  every  organ 
of  every  infinitesimal  creature,  we  can  no  longer 
reasonably  withhold  our  faith  in  his  sympathetic 
presence  with  the  humblest  of  his  human  children. 
And  so  science  will  eventually  forever  silence  the 
fear  of  the  self-depreciating,  who,  in  their  dis- 
couragement, are  tempted  to  doubt  whether  the 
great  God  of  the  universe  has  ever  in  the  vast 
multiplicity  of  his  affairs  particularly  noticed 
them,  much  more  kept  loving  and  tireless  watch 
over  their  personal  destiny,  or  ever  sought  for 
their  confidence  and  the  outpouring  of  their  long- 
ing and  their  love. 

But  science  has  not  only  convinced  us  that  we 
have  no  valid  reason  for  questioning  God's  sym- 
pathetic presence,  but  furnished  the  strongest 
possible  grounds  for  resting  our  full  faith  upon 
it,  and  making  it  the  delight  and  inspiration  of 
our  burdened  souls.  Those  grounds  it  furnished 
the  moment  it  published  its  discovery  that  every 
form  of  vegetive  and  animal  life  demanded  an  en- 
vironment, that  it  has  no  resources  in  itself  for 
self-maintenance,  and  that  also  within  its  reach 
it  invariably  found  that  on  which  it  was  fitted  to 
feed.  Plants  have  required  soils  and  sunlight  and 
distilling  dews,  and  they  have  found  them. 
Though  almost  countless  the  peculiarities  of 
need,  no  species  has  appeared  for  which  provision 
has  not  been  made  awaiting  its  advent.  The  sea- 
weed found  its  ocean  bed  and  salted  surf;  the 
cactus,  its  parched  sand  plain ;  the  lichen,  its  rock ; 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  97 

edelweiss,  its  Alpine  height;  the  gills  and  fins  of 
fish,  oceans  of  water;  the  wings  and  lungs  of 
birds,  oceans  of  air.  Our  eyes  have  found  ob- 
jects without  to  be  painted  on  their  retina  within 
and  artist-sunbeams  to  paint  them ;  our  olfactories, 
the  air  loaded  with  odorous  exhalations ;  our 
nerves  of  taste,  a  wide  variety  of  flavors  to  select 
and  enjoy ;  our  ears,  all  nature  vocal  with  a  grand 
concert  of  song.  Not  only  are  our  bodies  con- 
stituted to  touch  and  take  in  an  environment  and 
find  one  wondrously  suited  to  every  need,  but  the 
same  is  time  of  both  our  intellectual  and  emotional 
capacities.  All  nature  abounds  with  suggestive 
thought.  It  is  full  of  mental  stimulant.  It  is 
a  book  in  which  every  grade  of  intellect  finds  pas- 
sages of  absorbing  interest  and  deepest  import. 
Its  leaves  are  turned  eagerly  by  prattling  children, 
gray-haired  savants,  matter-of-fact  men  of  affairs, 
dream-enamored  poets,  and  system-building  phi- 
losophers. Its  lore  is  still  unexhausted,  though 
the  human  race  for  scores  of  centuries  has  sought 
to  master  it.  It  has  depths  of  meaning  which 
human  insight  has  not  yet  fathomed;  heights  of 
sublime  exaltation  to  which  not  even  the  most 
spiritually  gifted  have  yet  attained.  It  Is  full  of 
open  letters  to  every  sor  and  daughter  of  earth 
with  every  sentence  penned  by  a  Divine  hand. 
Our  longings  for  Intellectual  and  sympathetic 
Interchange  with  our  fellows  have  been  met 
through  literature,  and  arts  and  architecture, 
through  family  ties  and  ever  widening  social  cir- 


98  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

cles.  But  with  this  almost  Infinite  painstaking  to 
provide  a  fitting  environment  for  man,  there  is  a 
want  which  In  all  the  fullness  of  God's  works  there 
Is  absolutely  nothing  suited  to  satisfy.  Man  In 
his  higher  nature  craves  a  sympathy  which  no 
creature  can  give.  Unless  these  spiritual  aspira- 
tions and  deep  longings,  the  sure  tokens  not  only 
of  his  Divine  sonship  but  of  his  Divine  likeness, 
can  find  a  Divine  environment  of  companionship, 
of  interchange  of  thought  and  affection,  all  that  is 
God-like  within  him  will  languish  and  die  and 
he  sink  to  brute  life  or  below  it.  National  and 
individual  history,  wherever  people  have  self- 
exiled  themselves  from  the  Father,  has  furnished 
sad  cumulative  proofs  of  this.  Is  it  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  a  plan  so  wonderful  In  its  elab- 
orate painstaking  and  masterful  achievements,  ex- 
hibiting such  seeming  exhaustlessness  of  inventive 
resource,  would  fail  just  where  a  failure  must 
prove  so  disastrous?  Is  it  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  God  would  create  man  with  a  capacity  and 
a  longing  for  his  own  sympathetic  presence,  in- 
deed make  that  presence  necessary  to  his  well- 
being,  and  then  withhold  it;  that  he  would  give 
him  spiritual  lungs  on  whose  respiration  of  an 
atmosphere  of  Divine  loving  recognition  his  spir- 
itual life  depended,  and  then  leave  him  to  pant 
and  die  In  a  vacuum?  These  questions  carry  with 
them  their  own  emphatic  denial.  To  proclaim  this 
grand  fact  of  God's  sympathetic  presence  and  to 
embody  It  In  a  life  was  the  glory  of  Christ's  mis- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  99 

sion  to  this  sin-cursed  and  sorrow-burdened  world. 
He  even  sealed  it  with  his  blood. 

Thus  from  nature,  philosophy,  and  the  revealed 
word  there  comes  to  this  life-giving  fact  a  three- 
fold confimiation. 

In  our  lonely  hours,  in  hours  of  desperate  bat- 
tling with  temptation,  of  bitter  bereavement,  of 
perplexed  and  care-cumbered  thought,  at  times 
when  our  hearts  bleed  with  poignant  regret  or 
through  unjust  accusation,  when  friends  on  whom 
we  have  leaned  or  in  whom  we  have  confided  the 
sacred  secrets  of  our  inner  selves  have  become 
estranged,  through  the  long  days  of  languish- 
ment  on  sick  beds,  in  moments  when  with  stream- 
ing eyes  and  trembling  lips  we  bid  good-by  to 
loved  ones,  in  every  hour  of  need,  we  are  priv- 
ileged to  say^  as  did  the  Saviour  when  the  dark 
clouds  gathered  about  him :  "  And  yet  I  am  not 
alone,  for  the  Father  is  with  me." 

Into  God's  sympathetic  presence  the  lovingly 
obedient  come,  into  its  welcoming  smile,  its  golden 
sunlight,  its  eternal  day. 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 


IV 

I  have  thus  far  attempted  to  show  — 

1.  How  God  can  interfere  in  nature  whenever 
he  chooses  without  working  any  confusion, 
abrogating  any  law,  or  destroying  any  force ; 

2.  That  he  has  thus  actually  interfered,  and 
that  repeatedly ; 

3.  That  we  are,  each  one  of  us,  of  sufficient 
importance  to  warrant  his  interfering  for  us. 

I  now  desire  to  consider  whether  we  can  reason- 
ably believe  that  he  will  interfere  because  we  ask 
him,  doing  for  us  what  otherwise  he  would  not 
have  done. 

In  following  out  the  different  lines  of  inquiry 
suggested  by  this  theme,  we  have  found  that  the 
whole  earth  is  instinct  with  the  Divine  Presence, 
that  whichever  way  we  turn  we  stand  face  to  face 
with  nature's  God,  witnessing  not  only  finished 
works  replete  with  his  thought,  but  works  still  be- 
ing carried  on  by  organized  and  tireless  living 
forces.  These  forces  we  have  found  wrapped  in 
such  unfathomable  mystery,  working  right  before 
our  very  eyes  with  such  unabated  vigor,  such 
wondrous  precision,  such  wisdom,  such  irresistible- 
ness  of  movement,  that  we  have  recognized  Divine 
thought  and  Divine  power  in  every  bit  of  rock 
crystal,  every  pendent  leaf,  every  tint  of  sky  or 
painted  petal,  every  liquid  note  of  bird,  or  rest- 
100 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  101 

less  tongue  of  flame.  And  it  has  greatly  en- 
hanced our  pleasure  to  find  that  our  own  minds 
are  so  akin  to  the  Divine  that  we  can  trace  with 
clear,  interpretive  insight  the  great  trend  of  God's 
thoughts  through  the  ages  as  they  have  become 
incarnated  one  by  one;  for  when,  from  off  that 
illumined  face  confronting  us  everywhere,  there 
thus  fades  that  strange  faraway  look  and  in  its 
stead  comes  an  answering  glance  of  recognition 
and  kindly  greeting,  that  face  apparently  draws 
so  near  we  can  all  but  feel  its  warm  touch  upon 
our  cheek,  look  down  into  the  infinite  depths  of  its 
love-lit  eyes,  and  see  the  parting  of  its  lips  as  they 
break  the  long-kept  silence  with  words  of  bene- 
diction. 

But  it  appearing  that  these  forces  are  derivative 
and  delegated,  rather  than  direct  acts  of  Divine 
will,  we  have  found  that  we  must  take  other  steps 
in  our  thinking  before  we  can  reach  that  assurance 
for  which  every  human  heart  hungers,  of  God's 
still  being  present  on  this  earth  and  still  actively 
interested  in  it ;  for  otherwise,  what  grounds  have 
we  for  believing  that  these  forces  were  not  fully 
commissioned  ages  ago,  and  that  since  then  God 
has  gone  far  into  the  stellar  depths  to  people 
other  planets  and  never  once  come  back  again  or 
even  given  this  little  globe  a  passing  thought.? 
for  otherwise,  how  do  we  know  but  that  the  earth 
is  nothing  more  than  a  finished  piece  of  mechanism, 
like  the  watches  we  carry,  and,  like  them,  wound 
up  and  kept  running  by  the  coiled  energy  of  some 


102  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

hidden  spiral  spring?  Happily  we  have  discovered 
that  matter  and  force  are  of  such  a  nature,  and  so 
related,  that  abundant  opportunity  has  been  af- 
forded, and  with  apparent  design,  for  the  effective 
intervention  at  any  time  of  direct  will-power.  A 
study  of  our  own  experiences  has  suggested  this ; 
for,  if  we  by  the  might  of  our  own  wills  have 
wrought  such  multitudinous  changes  on  the  earth, 
we  can  readily  conceive  that  the  Divine  will  can 
work  by  analogous  methods,  and  be  as  much  more 
effective  as  the  Divine  knowledge  transcends  the 
human.  It  cannot,  as  we  have  found,  be  reason- 
ably urged  that  this,  God's,  direct  personal  inter- 
ference would  be  a  confession  of  flaw  in  his 
scheme  of  evolution,  as  provision  for  this  may 
have  been  and  doubtless  was,  a  part  of  that  very 
scheme.  He,  as  we  have  seen,  left  many  of  his 
works  incomplete  with  the  evident  design  that 
man's  will  should  complete  them ;  and  if  provision 
was  thus  made  for  the  after  use  of  the  guiding 
force  of  the  human  will,  why  not  for  that  of  the 
Divine?  And  we  are  confirmed  in  this  faith  when 
we  reflect  that,  otherwise,  God,  instead  of  being 
an  cxhaustless  fountain  of  outflowing,  energizing 
thought,  instead  of  being  to  us  the  very  personi- 
fication of  living  force,  of  tireless  mental  buoy- 
ancy and  zest,  becomes  a  picture  of  changeless, 
thoughtless,  emotionless  calm,  of  absolute  mental 
stagnation ;  all  the  vast  plans  of  his  whole  universe 
of  worlds,  having  been  completed  inconceivable 
ages    ago,    not    only    determined    upon    to    theii: 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  103 

minutest  details,  but  intrusted  for  their  unfold- 
ing to  agencies  fully  commissioned  and  empowered 
to  carry  out  those  details  to  the  very  letter.  Since 
that  time,  which  lies  in  a  past  so  remote  that  no 
finite  imagination  can  conceive  it,  he  must  have 
been  lying  with  folded  hands  and  folded  thought 
and  folded  feeling,  virtually  dead  in  the  midst  of 
the  abounding  life  which  he  himself  created.  This 
conception  of  the  Divine  existence  is  repellent  to 
every  earnest  active  soul,  and  there  is  nothing  in 
the  discoveries  of  science  to  compel  such  a  belief. 
The  perfecting  of  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  in 
man  must,  of  course,  be  God's  highest  work  here, 
and  command  his  chief  attention.  But  he  has 
linked  the  soul  indissolubly  with  matter  and 
cosmic  force  in  this  world  certainly,  and  also  in 
the  next,  if  the  Bible  disclosures  be  true ;  for  after 
death  our  souls,  so  says  the  record,  will  still  be 
clothed  upon,  though  the  garments  be  of  an  im- 
perishable and  glorified  texture.  So  we  have  no 
warrant  in  afl^rming  that  God  has  withdrawn  his 
personal  oversight  and  interference  from  any, 
even  the  lowest  of  his  kingdoms,  so  long  as  they 
are  so  inseparably  intertwined,  and  exercise  over 
each  other  an  influence  so  vital  and  lasting. 

The  facts  of  the  past  as  disclosed  by  science, 
we  have  found  to  confirm  us  in  this  faith;  the 
progressive  changes  from  a  first  formless  chaos 
of  dead  atoms  to  whirling  sun-clusters  and  solar 
systems  of  organized  peopled  worlds  being  but 
the  stately  steppings  of  a  creating  God,  and  testi- 


104  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

tying  to  a  sleepless  watch  and  tireless  activity  as 
the  ages  have  one  by  one  rolled  by.  On  this 
revelation  of  God's  mode  of  existence  in  the  past 
we  may  safely  predicate  that  of  to-day  and  of  all 
coming  time.  We  can  feel  assured  that  his  hands 
will  never  fold  in  weariness  in  caring  for  his  own, 
that  his  eyes  will  never  close  in  listless  inattention 
to  their  fate,  that  he  will  never  surrender  to  del- 
egated forces  the  full  conduct  of  the  complex  af- 
fairs of  his  universe;  but  will  ever  be  a  command- 
ing and  directing  power  everywhere  present  to  the 
uttermost  bounds  of  space, —  just  as  the  vital 
forces  within  the  boundaries  of  these  bodies  of 
ours  sway  the  cosmic,  only  more  perfectly ;  and  as 
our  spirits,  so  mysteriously  housed  within,  order 
the  organs  to  answer  the  behests  of  their  all- 
governing  wills. 

But  having  progressed  thus  far  in  our  at- 
tempted solution  of  this  most  perplexing  problem, 
we  find  ourselves  confronted  by  questions  far  more 
formidable  than  any  we  have  yet  met.  They  are 
questions  which  are  sure  to  intrude  whenever  there 
is  any  thorough  thinking  on  this  theme.  They 
have  proved  such  fruitful  sources  of  doubt  in 
earnestly  inquiring  minds,  that,  instead  of  being, 
as  they  too  often  are,  ignored  or  evaded  by  the 
leaders  of  Christian  thought,  they  should  be 
squarely  met  and  fully  answered.  I  remember 
stating  them  once  at  a  prayer-meeting  presided 
over  by  my  pastor,  who  was  also  a  college  pro- 
fessor, and,  although  they  were  perfectly  germane 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  105 

to  the  subject  of  the  evening,  and  I  asked  for  light 
and  needed  it,  he  simply  remarked,  "  There  is  some 
intellectual  difficulty  in  that,"  and  immediately 
passed  to  other  things,  and  neither  in  public  nor 
private  discourse  did  he  in  the  slightest  manner  ever 
again  allude  to  them.  This  reverend  teacher  in  his 
evasive  indifference  is,  I  fear,  far  from  being  an 
exceptional  case,  for  it  has  never  been  my  fortune 
to  have  either  heard  from  the  pulpit  or  seen  in 
print  any  attempted  reply. 

Grant,  says  the  doubting  Thomas,  that  it  is  true 
and  demonstrable,  as  claimed,  that  God  can  inter- 
fere, that  he  has  interfered  and  is  still  interfering, 
and  interfering  every  day  and  hour,  in  every  in- 
dividual life,  watching  that  life  with  loving 
interest  and  with  unremitting  care,  still  what  proof 
is  there,  in  all  this,  that  prayer  has  in  a  single 
instance  effected  any  change  in  the  plans  which 
God  had  formed  before  the  prayer  was  uttered? 
Has  any  prayer  given  God  any  new  information 
as  to  the  needs  of  any  petitioner;  or  rather,  has 
not  God  had  from  the  first  an  infinitely  fuller 
and  more  accurate  knowledge  of  the  entire  life- 
necessities  of  every  soul  than  the  soul  itself  can 
ever  possibly  have,  with  its  imperfect  finite  facul- 
ties and  meagre  experience?  Is  it  not  absurd  to 
imagine  that  we  can  in  any  way  instruct  Jehovah? 
Do  not  our  prayers  appear  to  him  who  knows  our 
real  needs  but  utterances  of  wildest  absurdities? 
But,  further  asks  the  questioner,  suppose  they  do 
sometimes  actually  voice  our  real  wants,  have  not 


106  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

those  wants  already  been  known  to  God  and  def- 
initely provided  for  by  him?  Has  he  not  been 
busy  for  ages  fitting  up  this  world  for  us?  Are 
not  those  instances  of  his  direct  interference  which 
are  insisted  on  as  having  actually  occurred  and 
as  still  occurring,  as  much  parts  of  this  original 
plan  as  the  formation  of  a  crystal  or  the  growth 
of  a  tree?  Has  he  not  thought  out  to  the  mi- 
nutest detail  just  what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it? 
Are  the  forces  at  work  in  the  world,  and  their 
combinations,  so  complex  that  exigencies  are  con- 
stantly arising  which  escaped  God's  foreknowl- 
edge or  for  which  he  failed  to  provide?  Does 
science  or  revelation  afford  us  any  warrant  for 
thus  limiting  God's  wisdom,  for  questioning  the 
perfection  of  his  works?  If  God  thus  thought 
out  deliberately  and  fully  his  vast  plans  before  he 
uttered  his  first  creative  fiat,  and  had  as  his  guide 
a  perfect  and  all-comprehending  foreknowledge, 
think  you  his  will  has  since  become  so  vacillating 
that  he  can  be  cajoled  against  his  best  judgment, 
or  that  more  kindly  feeling  can  be  enkindled 
within  him,  by  the  blind,  passionate  pleadings  of 
creatures  of  his  own  make,  and  whose  lives  are  yet 
but  in  the  bud? 

The  only  reply  I  have  ever  heard  given  leaves 
the  difficulties  just  where  it  found  them.  It  is 
this,  that  the  prayers  of  God's  people  have  been 
all  foreknown  to  him,  and  their  answers  provided 
for,  uncomputcd  ages  before  they  were  uttered; 
that   they    entered    into    God's    thought   when   he 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  107 

formed  his  original  plan,  and  were  made  to  con- 
stitute an  integral  part  of  it.  This  reply  is  so 
plausible  and  has  given  such  general  satisfaction, 
that  it  may  be  regarded  as  the  accepted  creed  of 
Christendom. 

Suppose  this  were  true,  that  God  has  both  fore- 
known all  prayers  and  made  ample  provision  for 
each  as  each  deserves,  would  not  the  difficulties 
just  urged  still  remain?  For  if  the  prayer  of  a 
righteous  man  availeth  much,  as  the  Scriptures 
teach,  and  if  it  had  influence  with  God,  as  Chris- 
tians believe,  what  matters  it,  so  far  as  these  ob- 
jections lie,  whether  that  influence  is  exerted  now 
or  was  exerted  ages  ago?  For,  according  to  the 
supposition,  prayer  has  actually  wrought  a  change 
in  the  Divine  purpose  just  the  same,  only  at  an 
earlier  date;  and  it  is  just  as  truly  an  embodiment 
of  the  blind  longings  of  a  finite  being  addressed 
to  an  infinite  God;  and  the  fact  of  the  prayer's 
availing  —  which  must  mean,  if  it  means  anything, 
that  it  actually  effects  a  change  in  God's  plan  at 
the  time  its  influence  is  felt — -witnesses  just  as 
pointedly  against  the  perfection  of  God's  plan, 
since  it  existed  before  the  change  was  wrought, 
and  against  the  stability  of  his  purpose,  whether 
that  change  occurs  now  or  took  place  before  the 
chaotic  fire-mist  was  rolled  into  suns.  But,  say 
you,  how,  then,  can  the  objection  be  answered? 
Only  in  this  one  way, —  by  denying  the  doubter's 
major  promise,  that  God's  foreknowledge  is  all- 
comprehending.     The    denial    of   this,   I   believe, 


108  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

can  be  shown  to  be  in  perfect  consonance  both 
with  sound  philosophy  and  the  Revealed  Word 
when  once  that  Word  is  rightly  understood.  Let 
us  then  examine  this  denial,  first,  from  a  philo- 
sophical standpoint,  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
science  of  metaphysics. 

If  God  foreknows  everything  that  will  ever 
come  to  pass,  all  his  own  mental  states  must  neces- 
sarily be  included  in  that  foreknowledge.  His 
eternal  past  and  eternal  future  must  be  to  him  an 
eternal  now.  This  is  axiomatic.  A  moment's 
reflection  will  convince  us  that  otherwise  there  is 
not  a  single  present  intention  or  plan  but  what 
is  exposed  to  the  possibility  of  modification.  If 
a  single  thought  or  emotion  is  ever  going  to 
spring  up  in  God's  mind  unanticipated,  coming  in 
as  a  complete  surprise,  God  himself  must  be  as 
ignorant  as  we  concerning  what  part  of  his  vast 
plans  it  will  pertain  to,  or  what  will  be  its  relative 
importance,  or  what  the  radius  or  duration  of  its 
influence.  Indeed,  both  radius  and  duration  must 
be  absolutely  infinite ;  for,  however  minute  the  in- 
fluence or  modification,  it  must  result  in  others, 
and  those  in  others  still  —  the  circle  widening  thus 
without  end;  for  the  parts  of  God's  plans  are  sup- 
posed to  be  intimately  interlinked,  complemental, 
so  precisely  fitted  part  to  part  that  the  eff*ect  of 
each  is  felt  throughout  the  whole,  like  the  intri- 
cate complications  of  a  piece  of  mechanism.  And 
If  one  thought  or  emotion  may  thus  spring  into 
being  unanticipated,   be   absolutely   original,   why 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  109 

not  ten  or  ten  thousand?  Indeed,  what  limit  can 
be  placed  on  their  number  or  on  their  modifying 
power?  And  so,  if  we  would  logically  defend  a 
belief  in  the  all-comprehensiveness  of  God's  fore- 
knowledge, we  must  affirm  that  not  a  single  new 
idea  can  arise  in  his  mind, —  not  a  single  new 
emotion  be  felt,  and  that  if  he  is  thus  limited  now 
he  must  have  been  equally  so  at  every  moment  in 
all  the  eternal  past,  and  must  be  through  all  the 
years  to  come ;  for  if  there  ever  has  been,  or  ever 
will  be,  a  moment  when  a  new  thought  can  thus 
come,  then  during  all  the  time  preceding  that  mo- 
ment the  foreknowledge  was  incomplete.  Where 
does  this  lead  us?  In  what  sort  of  an  intellectual 
or  emotional  condition  does  this  irrefragable  logic 
compel  us  to  assert  God  to  be  continually?  Un- 
questionably that  of  perfect  stagnation.  No 
thought-processes  can  be  carried  on  under  such 
conditions, —  no  succession  of  ideas,  no  change  of 
mental  state ;  but  God  must  have  been,  and  must 
still  be,  imprisoned  in  a  hopelessly  dead  calm. 

When  then  did  he  form  his  plans  for  creation? 
Under  this  supposition,  there  never  could  have 
been  a  time  when  he  began  to  think  about  them, 
nor  a  period  during  which  he  adjusted  their  dif- 
ferent parts,  each  to  each,  in  that  perfection  of 
harmony  which  so  astounds  us ;  for  that  would 
involve  thought-succession.  We  are  not  at  liberty 
under  this  supposition  to  affirm  even  that  the  en- 
tire plan  in  all  its  details  flashed  instantly  upon 
him, —  for  this  would  impeach  the  perfection  of 


110  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

his  foreknowledge  up  to  the  instant  of  such  in- 
flooding  of  thought,  but  must  content  ourselves 
with  asserting  that  it  has  existed  in  his  mind  from 
all  eternity  as  one  of  its  constituent  elements.  If 
God  has  had  no  thought-succession,  he  can  have 
had  no  feeling;  his  emotional  state  having  ever 
necessarily  been  that  of  unbroken  placidity, —  of 
absolute  apathy,  his  heart  throbless  as  stone.  He 
could  experience  no  change  of  feehng;  for  that 
would  involve  thought-succession.  From  all  the 
sources  of  joy  or  sorrow  of  which  we  can  con- 
ceive, he  would  be  utterly  debarred  —  from 
pleasurable  or  painful  memories,  from  hopes  and 
forebodings,  from  social  sympathies,  from  emo- 
tions that  accompany  changes,  contrasts,  surprises, 
from  the  glow  of  activity,  even  from  the  delights 
and  griefs  of  contemplation ;  for  they  all  involve 
thought-movement.  Therefore  under  this  sup- 
position God  can  have  no  emotional  activity,  for 
he  would  have  no  thought-activity  for  its  back- 
ground. Thoughts  must  course,  must  come  and 
go,  or  the  heart  lies  dead. 

Such  are  the  absurdities  in  which  we  become 
hopelessly  entangled  the  moment  we  attempt  to 
defend  the  doctrine  of  God's  perfect  foreknowl- 
edge. And  besides,  on  further  reflection,  we  will 
discover  that  it  is,  after  all,  utterly  impossible, 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  for  God  to  fore- 
know all  his  own  future.  The  very  fact  that  he" 
is  a  sovereign  spirit  precludes  this.  It  is  equally 
impossible,  and  for  the  same  reason,  for  him  to 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  Ill 

know  what  our  future  will  be.  He  has  made  us, 
equally  with  himself,  of  sovereign  will,  and  placed 
upon  us  all  the  responsibiHties  of  that  sovereignty. 
When  he  thus  created  us  in  his  own  image,  he,  by 
that  very  act,  surrendered  a  part  both  of  his  power 
and  of  his  foreknowledge.  He  has  left  it  possible 
for  us,  despite  all  the  influences  he  can  bring  to 
bear,  to  rebel  against  his  throne  and  persist  in  that 
rebellion.  He  in  thus  constituting  us  the  arbiters 
of  our  destinies,  necessarily  circumscribed  his 
own  power.  There  was  no  other  course  open 
to  him.  We  must  be  free,  must  be  sovereign,  if 
we  become  morally  accountable,  and  ever  reach  up 
out  of  a  state  of  simple  innocency  to  that  of  Di- 
vine virtue.  And  God  when  he  thus  surrendered 
absolute  control,  also  of  necessity  limited  his 
foreknowledge,  for  our  own  self -study  reveals  that 
our  perfect  freedom  of  choice  is  inseparably 
linked  with  uncertainty  as  to  what  that  choice 
will  be.  Character  can  be  evolved  only  out  of 
struggle.  Virtues  are  the  names  of  victories  won 
over  temptations ;  and  where  temptations  environ 
a  sovereign  will,  there  must  be  risks,  a  certain 
degree  of  uncertainty.  It  cannot  be  otherwise. 
We  cannot  exercise  this  sovereignty  or  know  that 
we  have  it.  unless  there  are  open  to  us  two  or  more 
courses  from  which  to  choose,  and  our  fidelity  to 
principle  or  the  depth  of  our  self-sacrificing  af- 
fection cannot  be  developed  or  brought  to  test 
except  by  genuine  wage  of  battle.  And  how  can 
it  be  certainly  known  whether  this  shall  issue  in 


112  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

defeat  or  be  made  glorious  by  decisive  victory? 
From  the  very  nature  of  things,  complete  fore- 
knowledge is  precluded,  for  we  can  go  in  the 
direction  of  either  the  weaker  or  the  stronger 
motive.  But,  say  you,  perhaps  we  have  the  power 
thus  to  go,  but  in  point  of  fact  we  never  do,  for 
the  motive  that  controls  us  proves  itself  the 
stronger  in  that  we  invariably  yield  to  it.  This 
is  too  wide  a  conclusion  for  the  premises.  Our 
yielding  does  not  prove  it  the  stronger  intrinsically, 
but  simply  relatively,  and  then  only  because  we 
make  it  so  through  our  choosing  to  direct  and 
hold  the  current  of  our  thoughts  in  that  direc- 
tion until  the  chosen  object  of  contemplation  ac- 
quires prominence  and  power.  We  cannot  stop 
the  flow  of  thought,  but  can  change  its  direction. 
And  even  God  himself  cannot  with  unerring  cer- 
tainty predict  what  that  change  will  be,  for  it  is 
purely  an  act  of  sovereignty.  If,  in  fact,  we 
never  go  in  the  direction  of  the  weaker  motive, 
how  do  we  know  we  can?  Would  not  this  un- 
broken regularity  prove  the  presence  of  inexorable 
law?  The  testimony  of  our  inner  consciousness 
that  we  could  do  differently,  would  under  such 
circumstances  never  come  to  proof.  And  yet 
only  where  strict  regularity  prevails,  can  the 
necessary  data  be  obtained  for  perfect  foreknowl- 
edge? Outside  this  circle  of  responsible  sover- 
eignty, under  the  reign  of  absolutism,  of 
immutable  order,  within  which  the  physical  and 
vital  forces  and  the  pure  animal  instincts   work 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  113 

their  wonders,  God  can  of  course  predict  with 
unerring  certainty,  and  to  the  minutest  detail ;  for 
the  plan  is  all  his  own,  and  from  it  there  is  not 
the  slightest  deviation,  nor  can  there  be.  Courses 
here  are  predetermined  and  as  exact  as  mathemat- 
ical formulas.  God,  who  fixed  the  conditions, 
who  founded  the  laws,  must  know  the  issue.  But 
in  the  region  of  delegated  sovereignty,  of  abso- 
lute freedom  of  choice,  or  moral  accountability, 
uncertainty  just  as  necessarily  enters  in  and 
renders  prediction  impossible. 

Dr.  Henry  VanDyke  in  his  "  Gospel  for  an  Age 
of  Doubt,"  stated  and  defended  substantially  the 
same  position  I  have  here  taken.  As  he  is  one 
of  the  leading  lights  of  Presbyterianism,  from 
which,  if  anywhere,  it  would  be  supposed  strong 
opposition  would  come,  his  hearty  advocacy  is 
especially  noteworthy  and  reassuring. 

His  affirmation  is  briefly  this:  The  Divine 
omnipotence  which  Christ  taught  is  not  sheer, 
absolute,  unconditioned.  He  taught  that  God 
chose  to  hmit  the  autocratic  exercise  of  his 
sovereignty  by  creating  beings  who  have  the 
power  of  yielding  to  his  will  or  of  resisting  it, 
for  otherwise  he  would  be  forever  shut  out  from 
all  personal  relations,  they  being  possible  only 
where  there  are  different  independent  wills.  It 
must  be  admitted  frankly  that  this  view  of  Divine 
sovereignty  does  not  seem  to  be  consistent  with 
the  theory  of  absolute  divine  foreknowledge  of  all 
volitions   and  all  events.      If  an   event  is   certain, 


114  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

fixed  and  foreordained  then  God  knows  it  as 
such;  if  contingent  on  free,  self-determining, 
preferential  action  of  a  human  will  then  he  knows 
it  only  as  thus  contingent. 

If  what  I  have  argued  be  true,  we  need  no 
longer  struggle  with  those  hopeless  tasks  of 
harmonizing  foreordination  with  free  will,  and 
of  explaining  how  a  beneficent  God  could  bring 
into  being  souls  which  he  at  that  very  time  posi- 
tively knew  would  be  eternally  lost. 

The  doctrine  of  God's  perfect  foreknowledge 
is  not  only  unphilosophical,  but  also  unscriptural. 
The  Bible  exhorts  us  to  the  deepest  earnestness  in 
prayer, —  to  downright  importunity, —  and  en- 
courages us  to  believe  that  the  fervent  prayer  of 
the  righteous  man  availeth  much.  No  petitioner 
can  plead  with  any  genuine  unction  unless  he  be- 
lieves that  he  can  actually  efi'ect  some  change  in 
the  purposes  existing  in  the  Divine  Mind  at  the 
time  his  prayer  is  offered.  If  he  were  convinced 
that  everything  had  been  prearranged  from  all 
eternity ;  that  his  tears,  and  sighs,  and  passionate 
words  of  longing  had  been  present  in  God's  mind 
always ;  that  they  never  had  exerted,  and  never 
could  exert,  any  influence,  eff^ect  any  change,  as 
there  could  never  be  a  time  when  they  would  first 
arrest  God's  attention, —  how  could  he  wrestle, 
agonize,  in  prayer?  It  would  seem  but  empty 
show  to  him,  that  he  was  merely  playing  a  part. 
Every  word  he  uttered  would  fall  back  dead.  If 
he  believes  in  God's  foreknowledge,  he  must,  while 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  115 

he  prays,  if  he  prays  as  the  Bible  commands, 
utterly  forget  his  belief  and  fall  into  the  tempo- 
rary delusion  that  the  matter  is  yet  undetermined, 
that  God's  heart  is  tender,  can  be  moved,  that  his 
purposes  can  be  changed.  He  must  forget  his 
belief,  must  go  ahead  just  as  if  foreknowledge 
were  not  true.  Think  you  God  would  force  his 
children  to  such  straits,  to  such  mental  stultifica- 
tion? The  thought  is  repellent.  Read  if  you 
will  the  ninth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy.  Moses 
here  rehearses  the  several  rebellions  of  Israel,  and 
his  three  separate  pleadings  before  the  Lord,  of 
forty  days  and  forty  nights  each,  without  either 
eating  bread  or  drinking  water.  Each  time  he 
fell  down  before  a  very  angry  God  who  had  fully 
purposed  and  had  definitely  announced  his  pur- 
pose to  destroy  the  rebels,  and  each  time,  if 
Moses  can  be  credited,  he  actually  changed  that 
purpose  right  then  and  there  and  rescued  his  peo- 
ple. The  God  here  depicted  had  none  of  that 
foreknowledge  which  theologians  with  such 
strange  unanimity  ascribed  to  him.  But,  say  you, 
that  and  similar  accounts  scattered  throughout 
the  Bible  are  simply  instances  of  anthropomor- 
phism, or  rhetorical  accommodation,  of  describing 
in  the  language  of  human  experiences  and  human 
limitations  what  really  transcends  the  human ; 
that  it  was  not  the  intent  to  have  these  narrations 
interpreted  as  literal  history,  but  as  poetic  ap- 
proximations or  dim  shadowings  of  really  inef- 
fable truths.     It  seems  to  me  that  it  would  be  a 


116  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

strange  way  to  bring  the  truth  within  our  com- 
prehension, to  state  what  is  directly  opposed  to 
the  truth,  and  to  reiterate  the  downright  false- 
hood, again  and  again.  In  a  most  misleading  way, 
and  in  a  matter  of  such  vital  moment  that  all 
possibility  of  religious  life  depends  on  it,  and 
through  which  alone  any  lasting  comfort  comes 
to  the  hungry  human  soul.  Could  Moses  have 
thought  that  what  he  was  so  importunately  plead- 
ing for  had  actually  been  determined  upon  mil- 
lions of  ages  before,  and  that  the  picture  of  his 
prostrate  form,  his  streaming  eyes,  his  starving 
body,  his  passion-swayed  soul,  had  been  lying  in 
the  divine  mind  from  all  eternity?  He  unques- 
tionably believed  directly  the  opposite,  and  the 
narration  was  designed  to  teach  us  that  directly 
the  opposite  was  true. 

Think  you  that  Christ  during  that  long  night 
of  agony  in  Gethsemane,  when  he  cried  out  over 
and  over  again,  while  great  drops  of  blood  stood 
on  his  brow,  "  If  It  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass 
from  me,"  knew  all  the  time  that  there  was  but 
one  way  in  which  the  human  race  could  be  rescued, 
that  precisely  this  one  had  been  predetermined  to 
its  minutest  detail,  and  that  all  that  was  left  for 
him  was  to  carry  it  out  to  the  bitter  end?  Were 
not  those  the  agonized  utterings  of  a  faithful  yet 
shrinking  human  soul, —  for  Christ  was  human  as 
well  as  divine, —  poured  out  before  a  supposed 
loving  and  sympathetic  Father?  And  have  we 
not  a  right  to  believe  that  they  not  only  deepened 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  IIT 

God's  sympathy,  but  actually  influenced  him  to 
again  reconsider  the  whole  subject,  that  haply 
he  might  discover  some  escape  for  his  Son  from 
the  impending  doom?  When  Christ  prayed,  he 
unquestionably  meant  the  same  as  if  he  had 
directly  said,  "  Father,  do  think  it  over  again, 
and  see  if  it  be  possible,  and  if  it  is,  let  the  cup 
pass,"  for  the  petition  is  pointless  unless  this 
thought  is  embodied  in  it.  Christ  had  not  yet  for 
an  instant  harbored  the  thought  of  relinquishing 
the  enterprise  or  even  imperiling  it  by  any  at- 
tempt at  self-rescue.  He  did  not  even  ask  for 
sustaining  grace.  All  he  pleaded  for  was  another 
more  searching  inquiry  to  see  if  some  different 
means  of  rescue  could  not  be  devised.  He  simply 
desired  to  avoid  needless  humiliation  and  pain.  In 
what  a  pitiable  farce  he  must  have  consented  to 
become  an  actor  during  the  watches  of  that  memo- 
rable night,  if  he  positively  knew  all  the  time  that 
there  was  no  other  way  possible!  And  if  he  did 
not  thus  know,  but  God  did, —  and  that  too  from 
all  eternity,  even  to  the  precise  mode  and  to  its 
every  detail, —  and  had  unalterably  determined  up- 
on its  being  carried  out  to  the  very  letter,  with 
what  cold,  relentless  cruelty  this  Father  must  have 
listened,  hour  after  hour,  to  that  sorrow-stricken 
Son  as  he  plead  in  heart-rending  agony  for  him 
to  see  if  there  were  not  some  other  equally  effective 
way  to  save  the  lost !  How  could  he  listen  to  that 
pleading,  wailed  out  on  the  night  air,  for  some- 
thing he  had  not  the  faintest  idea  of  granting? 


118  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

Why  did  he  not  encircle  him  in  the  arms  of  his 
everlasting  love  and  at  once  explain  the  impos- 
sibility of  change,  if  he  certainly  knew  that  no 
change  was  possible?  What  importunate  plead- 
ing! No  parallel  can  be  found  in  all  human 
history.  Was  it  for  naught?  Was  it  a  stupen- 
dous blunder  bom  of  ignorance?  We  cannot 
mistake  it  for  some  blind  outcry  of  a  sinking  soul. 
Should  we  not  seek  for  some  sane,  sensible  purpose 
in  the  plea?  We  have  here  revealed  not  simply 
one  of  the  disciplinary  seasons  in  Christ's  career, 
his  desperate  battling  with  the  tempter,  for  he  had 
betrayed  no  weakness,  no  unwillingness  to  face,  if 
need  be,  any  fate  however  terrible.  He  showed 
from  first  to  last  a  spirit  of  perfect  submission,  for 
note  how  carefully  he  coupled  with  his  passionate 
prayer,  "  Not  as  I  will,  but  as  thou  wilt."  Noth- 
ing could  be  added  to  his  consecration.  His  self- 
surrender  stood  complete.  His  soul  was  white  as 
the  light  that  beats  on  God's  throne.  But  how 
natural,  and  necessary,  and  full  of  deep  signifi- 
cance, appears  this  whole  scene  in  this,  earth's 
darkest  tragedy,  the  moment  that  we  conceive  that 
Christ,  instead  of  being  crazed  by  his  grief,  was 
quickened  by  it  to  clearer  spiritual  insight ;  that  in 
his  cry,  "  O  my  Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let  this 
cup  pass  from  w^,"  the  real  plea  was  that  the 
whole  subject-matter  of  modes  of  rescue  should  be 
reopened  and  again  most  searchingly  reviewed; 
that  God  fully  answered  that  prayer  by  a  long, 
deep  study ;  and  that,  when  the  last  faint  ray  of 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  119 

hope  went  out  in  night,  he  in  accents  tender  as 
an  infinite  pity  could  make  them,  told  Christ  all; 
and  then  that  the  Saviour,  satisfied,  rose  from  his 
knees,  wiped  away  the  blood-stains  of  his  agony, 
and  with  a  calm,  majestic  bearing  —  that  never 
again  left  him,  save  in  the  last  throes  of  dissolu- 
tion,—  said  to  his  disciples,  "  Rise  up,  let  us  go ; 
lo !  he  that  betrayeth  me  is  at  hand." 

Had  I  time,  and  were  it  necessary,  I  might  mul- 
tiply indefinitely  citations  from  Scripture  of 
cases  in  which  it  is  clearly  taught  that  even  to 
God's  eye  the  future  is  not  wholly  uncurtained, — 
that  he  carries  on  processes  of  thought  as  we  do, 
elaborates  plans,  modifies  them  and  sometimes  even 
abandons  them  altogether  to  meet  the  demands  of 
unforeseen  exigencies  as  they  arise,  that  he  inter- 
feres in  behalf  of  his  children  and  because  they  ask 
him,  actually  forming  and  executing  entirely  new, 
unpremeditated  purposes  in  response  to  their  ask- 
ing. 

Against  this  view,  that  we  actually  exert  an  in- 
fluence over  the  Divine  mind,  it  has  been  urged,  as 
I  have  already  remarked,  that  it  implies  imperfec- 
tion in  the  Divine  adjustments,  and  vacillation  in 
the  Divine  will,  that  it  is  the  very  height  of  pre- 
sumption in  us  to  suppose  that  we  can  influence 
the  great  God  of  the  universe  to  do  differently 
from  what  he  had  in  his  wisdom  deliberately 
planned.  The  usual  reply,  that  God  has  from 
the  first  foreknown  all  prayers  and  carefully  in- 
corporated his  answers  into  his  original  designs, 


120  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

is,  as  I  have  endeavored  to  point  out,  fatally  lack- 
ing both  in  sound  philosophy  and  in  Scripture 
support.  How,  then,  can  the  objection  be  met? 
In  the  first  place,  God  has,  as  I  have  explained, 
left  his  works  in  such  plastic  state  that  he  can 
whenever  he  chooses  interfere  by  direct  will-power 
without  occasioning  any  disorder.  If  so,  what  can 
be  urged  against  the  belief  that  he  left  them  thus 
with  the  express  design  of  introducing  from  time 
to  time  such  modifications  as  circumstances  should 
require?  Indeed,  what  other  explanation  can  be 
given  than  this  for  the  presence  of  this  universal 
characteristic?  This,  instead  of  betraying  a 
weakness,  a  flaw,  in  God's  plans,  reveals  its 
strength  and  finish.  So  far  as  it  was  possible 
for  him  to  perfectly  foreknow,  so  far  the  condi- 
tions of  change  and  activity  have  been  unalterably 
fixed,  as  in  the  operation  of  chemic,  vital,  and  in- 
stinct forces.  But  realizing  that  in  delegating 
to  his  human  offspring  the  responsible  power  of 
free  choice  he  would  necessarily  let  in  the  element 
of  uncertainty,  thus  obscuring  his  prophetic 
vision,  he  with  most  profound  wisdom  contrived 
through  this  very  plasticity  in  nature  to  be  able 
to  meet  any  emergency  that  might  arise,  to  leave 
every  avenue  free,  every  particle  of  matter  and 
every  form  of  force  promptly  responsive  to  his 
call.  His  plans  in  such  a  case,  instead  of  being 
ill  advised  and  marred  with  faults,  are  simply 
unperfected  and  In  constant  process  of  comple- 
tion.    He  is  thus  afforded  ample  opportunity  to 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  121 

enjoy  unceasing  mental  activity  and  with  sleep- 
less eye  and  tireless  hand  to  be  ever  caring  for  his 
own.  To  me  this  conception  of  God  is  by  far 
the  most  exalted  and  stimulating.  Instead  of  an 
idle  spectator  walled  out  of  his  own  universe,  he 
becomes  an  intense  participant  of  effective  per- 
sonal presence,  a  living,  loving  spirit,  free  and 
masterful,  the  embodiment  of  all  the  active  vir- 
tues and  throbbing  sympathies  that  are  the  neces- 
sary heroic  belongings  of  him  who  would  win  the 
affectionate  reverence  of  human  hearts. 

In  consonance  with  this  view  we  shall  find  that 
actual  and  adequate  provision  has  been  made,  and 
that  methods  have  been  devised  in  the  very  con- 
stitution of  things  for  the  answering  of  prayer. 
They  are  to  be  found  in  part  in  the  well  nigh 
miraculous  capacities  of  this  self-same  sub-con- 
scious mind  to  which  we  have  alluded,  and  in  that 
law  of  suggestion  under  which  its  invaluable  serv- 
ices are  placed  at  our  disposal.  In  the  nature  of 
this  provision  it  will  also  be  seen  that  it  is  God's 
purpose  not  to  directly  interfere  except  in  emer- 
gencies where  means  already  provided  and  placed 
in  human  reach  prove  inadequate  to  accomplish 
the  desired  ends. 

To  make  our  requests  known  to  God  in  the  right 
spirit,  that  is,  with  the  understanding  that  we 
will  actively  and  at  once  set  about  using  whatever 
resources  we  now  have,  or  may  acquire,  and  with 
the  understanding  that  we  purpose  to  ask  only 
for  what  we  intently  long  for  and  are  willing  to 


122  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

make  every  proper  personal  sacrifice  to  secure,  to 
purge  ourselves  from  all  selfishness,  to  place  such 
implicit  trust  in  God's  loving  care  that  no  worry- 
ment  will  enter  in,  to  open  our  minds  unreservedly 
to  the  inflowing  of  his  helpful  sympathy ;  all  this 
is  to  secure  the  most  favorable  conditions,  and  to 
invite  ultimate  success. 

Prayers  for  blessings  which  are  now  or  may  be 
within  our  own  reach  have  already  been  answered. 
It  would  be  idle  to  pray  to  be  placed  in  Liverpool 
so  long  as  an  ocean  steamer  is  at  the  wharf  ready 
to  take  us  there.  God  will  not  furnish  again  what 
he  has  amply  provided.  When  we  come  into  that 
state  of  submission  where  we  can  say  from  our 
hearts,  "  not  my  will  but  thine,"  we  have  not 
necessarily  tied  our  own  hands,  but  we  have,  in- 
deed, liberated  God's  by  making  it  possible  as 
never  before  to  carry  out  his  plans  of  loving  help 
without  injury  to  us;  on  the  other  hand  while  we 
harbor  a  spirit  of  insistence  on  having  our  own 
way,  to  grant  our  request  would  be  to  encourage 
us  in  that  spirit  and  to  intensify  it,  to  weaken  our 
trust  in  him  and  make  ourselves  self-sufficient. 
This  spirit  of  submission  does  not  necessarily  pre- 
clude having  and  expressing  preference  and  long- 
ing. We  not  3^et  knowing  God's  mind  in  the 
matter,  it  does  not  prevent  us  from  trying  to 
co-operate  with  him  in  securing  our  desires,  it 
simply  places  us  in  an  attitude  of  loving  trust,  of 
patient  waiting,  of  assurance  that  the  best  will 
prevail;  meantime  it  takes  one  very   serious   ob- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  123 

struction  out  of  God's  path  to  the  granting  of  our 
request.  We  can  help  God  as  well  as  he  can  help 
us. 

Until  we  are  convinced  to  the  contrary  we  have 
a  right  to  believe  that  what  we  unselfishly  desire  is 
what  God  wants  us  to  have  and  what  he  will  surely 
help  us  to  get,  how  and  when  we  must  leave  to  his 
infinite  wisdom  and  love  to  determine.  His  plans 
for  answering  may  in  some  instances  reach  over 
into  the  other  life,  but  their  accomplishment  is 
certain  and  will  not  unnecessarily  be  delayed. 

He  needs  our  co-operation,  desires  us  to  use  all 
known  and  rightful  aids  and  remedies,  and  when 
necessary  stands  ready  to  supplement  our  efforts. 
There  is  an  attitude  of  resignation  that  is  false, 
fatalistic,  utterly  unfilial,  not  only  not  enjoined 
but  positively  forbidden.  This  is  characteristic 
of  Mohammedanism  and  Buddhism,  and  of  all 
Oriental  philosophy.  There  is  a  belief  in  Divine 
imminence  widely  prevailing  at  the  present  day 
in  our  own  churches,  maintaining  that  God  as  "  an 
Infinite  Spirit  fills  all  the  universe  with  himself 
alone,  so  that  all  is  from  him  and  in  him  and  there 
is  nothing  that  is  outside,"  that  all  the  inorganic 
and  the  organic  forces  are  the  direct  energizings 
of  his  personal  will,  all  life  infused  and  suffused 
with  his  will,  the  whole  universe  his  living  gar- 
ment ;  a  belief  that  is  alike  destructive  of  the  true 
spirit  of  prayer,  for  unless  we  can  believe  in  God 
as  transcendent,  as  apart  from  his  creation,  and 
in    delegated,    secondary  causes,   carrying   out   a 


IM  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

general  plan  which  is  open  to  modifications  to 
suit  unforeseen  emergencies,  we  can  not  ask  God 
to  interfere  either  directly  or  indirectly  for  then 
we  should  be  simply  asking  him  to  interfere  with 
himself. 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge  says,  *'  Science  cultivates  a 
vigorous,  adult,  intelligent,  serpent-like  wisdom 
and  active  interference  with  the  course  of  nature ; 
religion  fosters  a  meek,  receptive,  child-hearted 
attitude  of  dove-like  resignation  to  Divine  Will." 
This  may  be  true  of  some  religionists,  but  not 
of  true  religion. 

If  you  will  examine  recent  works  on  psychology 
you  will  find  that  this  very  frame  of  mind  which 
I  have  described  as  the  one  in  which  we  should 
pray  is  the  one  out  of  which  the  most  effective 
suggestions  will  come  to  the  sub-conscious  mind, 
as  it  embodies  faith,  trust,  complete  concentration 
and  absorption  of  the  attention,  deep,  unselfish 
love,  cheerful  expectancy,  whole  souled  co-opera- 
tion, true  submission,  exclusion  of  fear  and  all 
forms  of  disturbing  and  unworthy  thoughts. 

In  this  way  you  enlist  not  only  the  curative 
and  kindly  helping  forces  already  organized  and 
operative,  but  also  when  necessary  the  direct  be- 
nign will  power  of  God  himself  who  ever  keeps 
over  his  own  his  loving  watch  and  care. 

How  these  suggestions  arouse  all  the  latent  ac- 
tivities of  this  sub-conscious  self,  of  whose  "  sub- 
merged mentation  we  catch  only  indirect  refracted 
glimpses,"  and  how  its  marvels  are  wrought  are 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  125 

mysteries  which  so  far  we  have  made  very  little 
headway  in  fathoming.  The  conscious  personality 
is  never  more  than  a  small  fraction  of  the  psychical 
personality. 

Part  emerges  into  consciousness,  the  most  mar- 
velous part,  "  the  underground  workshop  of 
thought,"  as  Dr.  Holmes  characterizes  it,  remains 
concealed.  We  do  know,  however,  that  it  is  one 
of  the  most  potent  agencies  ever  at  work  in  the 
world,  and  by  experience  we  have  found  the  secret 
charm,  suggestion,  that  will  unfetter  its  forces. 
We  have  also  found  out  some  of  its  limitations, 
for  it  is  only  one  out  of  many  of  God's  instru- 
mentalities, and  so  the  more  conservative  and  sane- 
minded  of  Christian  psychotherapists  confine  their 
attention  solely  to  functional  nervous  complaints 
in  which  the  mind  and  moral  nature  are  controlling 
factors,  and  these  are  indeed  a  great  company 
making  up,  according  to  the  estimate  of  an  emi- 
nent neurologist,  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  dis- 
orders of  the  American  people,  including  as  they 
do  neurasthenia,  hysteria  in  its  protean  forms  of 
simulated  organic  lesions,  hypochondria  and  mor- 
bid worries;  while  excluding  diseases  caused  by 
micro-organisms,  like  malaria,  pneumonia,  diph- 
theria, yellow  fever,  cancer  and  smallpox,  also 
cases  requiring  surgical  operation,  and  those  in 
which  the  tissues  have  been  actually  destroyed. 

Out  from  the  shadowy  manifestations  of  the 
sub-liminal  self  come  "  genius,  premonition,  inspi- 
ration, prevision,  telepathy,  clairvoyance,  the  hyp- 


126  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

notic  trance  and  allied  states  at  present  beyond 
the  pale  of  science,  but  inside  the  universe  of  fact." 
No  attitude  of  the  soul  is  so  certain  of  securing 
the  co-operation  of  these  mighty  spiritual  forces  as 
that  of  devout  prayer  and  through  them  we  are 
brought  into  access  to  all  other  helpful  instru- 
mentalities of  God's  providing,  besides  coming  into 
the  most  intimate  spiritual  relationship  with  God 
himself.  Through  telepathy,  the  spirit's  wire- 
less telegraph,  to  cite  but  a  single  one,  our  per- 
sonality can  reach  out,  in  control,  to  those,  how- 
ever far  away,  who  can  render  us  service  or  it  may 
be  are  disposed  to  do  us  harm. 

An  instance  once  came  to  my  personal  knowl- 
edge illustrating  this.  A  man  at  one  time  had  it 
in  his  power  and  in  his  purpose  to  do  another  a 
great  business  injury.  This  second  man  heard 
of  it  in  some  way.  That  night  he  agonized  in 
prayer  until  near  daybreak,  that  God  would  avert 
the  impending  calamity.  At  last  there  came  to 
him  profound  peace  and  he  fell  asleep.  The  next 
day  he  heard  through  a  mutual  acquaintance  the 
confession  of  the  first  man,  that  his  mind  had 
come  into  such  a  distressing  tumult  over  the  mat- 
ter that  he  had  to  abandon  the  project  before  he 
could  get  any  comfort  or  peace.  Of  course  I 
cannot  say  with  certainty  that  the  agitation  and 
final  change  of  purpose  was  wrought  by  telepathy, 
God  employing  this  indirect  method  of  answering 
prayer,  but  I  can  say  that  this  is  a  very  prob- 
able, a  very  natural,  explanation,   and  serves  to 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  127 

show  the  avenues  left  open  here  and  there  by  the 
Heavenly  Father,  through  which  he  may  extend 
to  his  pleading  children  his  personal  care. 

Auto-hypnotism,  to  cite  another  of  these  in- 
direct means,  has  no  doubt  saved  many  martyrs 
from  the  horrors  of  their  fate.  They  have  been 
lifted  into  that  state  of  ecstasy  in  which  pain  and 
fear  are  impossible,  while  burning  at  the  stake  or 
while  being  torn  in  pieces  by  the  ravenous  beasts 
of  the  amphitheatre. 

There  are  no  doubt  laws  of  prayer  amid  the 
mysteries  of  the  universe.  So  prevalent  an  in- 
stinct must  be  founded  on  the  constitution  of  the 
world.  Prayer  will  be  found  to  be  a  positive 
power,  the  prayer  attitude  being  a  definite  psychic 
state  having  natural  psychic  consequents  opening 
the  inner  consciousness,  enlarging  the  soul's  re- 
ceptivity to  spiritual  forces  and,  because  of  the 
close  union  of  body  and  soul,  acting  on  all  the 
nerve  centres,  restoring  tone  and  rhythm. 

Man's  will,  we  now  know,  can  co-operate  with 
God's,  effecting  results  which  would  not  be  secured 
were  not  both  wills  conjoined.  In  prayer  we  are 
brought  into  close  sympathetic  relations  with  the 
Heavenly  Father.  We  unburden  our  souls  to 
him,  confide  all  our  secret  sorrows  and  aspirations 
and  longings,  for  we  feel  that  he  understands 
them,  and  can  be  trusted.  This  very  unburdening 
brings  relief.  We  no  longer  feel  lonely  and 
friendless.  The  soul  thus  freed  is  in  the  best 
mood  possible  to  convey  auto-suggestions  to  the 


128  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

sub-conscious  self  and  that  self  best  prepared  to 
take  them  in.  We  are  thus  brought  into  tele- 
pathic touch  with  the  Infinite,  and  are  brought 
into  tune  with  those  among  our  fellows  who  can 
render  aid.  What  more  powerful  stimulant  to 
health  of  body  and  soul?  What  more  powerful 
persuasive  over  others  or  incentive  to  ourselves? 

Modern  psychotherapy,  the  healing  power  of 
the  spirit,  has  been  crudely  foreshadowed  all  down 
the  centuries.  It  is  ingrained  in  the  very  fibre  of 
all  human  history,  although  this  psychic  element 
with  its  myriad  activities  thus  dimly  divined  by 
philosophers  and  religionists  in  the  long  ago,  is 
just  beginning  to  be  explored  in  downright  ear- 
nest by  the  scientists  of  to-day.  Christ  demon- 
strated it  in  many  of  the  cures  he  wrought.  He 
taught  it  to  his  disciples  and  they  successfully 
practiced  it  in  their  day.  It,  however,  gradually 
fell  into  disuse  as  society  grew  more  complex. 
The  Church  through  neglect  largely  lost  its  power. 
It  is  now  again  coming  to  its  own.  The  New 
Thought  is  but  a  restatement  of  the  old.  The 
new  movement,  in  its  saner  aspects  is  an  earnest 
attempt  to  recover  those  principles  and  powers  of 
the  Church  which  should  never  have  fallen  into 
disuse.  Doctor  Horace  Bushnell  boldly  chal- 
lenged in  his  day  the  Christian  Church  to  show 
warrant  for  abdicating  its  healing  function. 

Professor  William  James,  of  Harvard,  says, 
"  It  is  quite  obvious  that  a  wave  of  religious  ac- 
tivity analogous  in  some  respects  to  the  spread  of 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  129 

early  Christianity  is  passing  over  our  American 
Continent.  Materialistic  philosophy  is  being 
superseded  by  a  new  idealism  —  the  supremacy  of 
the  spirit,  the  sub-conscious  self,  connection  of 
mind  to  mind,  are  now  commanding  attention  — " 
We  may  go  still  farther  and  say  that  a  great 
spiritual  awakening  is  sweeping  over  the  world, 
an  enlarged  realization  of  its  hitherto  neglected 
spiritual  resources,  and  a  wider  understanding  of 
how  to  transform  them  into  servitors  and  saviors 
of  mankind. 

Why  is  it,  we  naturally  ask,  that  God  has  suf- 
fered the  world  to  wait  so  long  before  coming  into 
this,  its  rich  spiritual  inheritance?  Why  so  long 
conceal  this  priceless  treasure,  if  there  is  one,  giv- 
ing only  a  hint  of  it  here  and  there?  We  might 
with  equal  reason  ask  why  he  buried  the  coal  beds 
and  rock  quarries  and  mines  of  metal,  why  he  hid 
the  utilities  of  steam  and  electric  forces,  why 
secretly  provided  the  possibilities  of  anesthetics, 
and  vaccines,  and  anti-toxins  and  poison  antidotes 
in  the  chemistries  of  the  earth,  why  he  left  his 
vegetable  and  lower  animal  creations  in  a  wild, 
crude  state  requiring  subjugation  before  utiliza- 
tion, why  he  so  planned  that  only  after  vast  toil 
and  exhausting  study,  the  evolving  of  deep  in- 
ventive thought,  railroads  and  steamships  and 
printing  presses  and  wireless  telegraphs  and  hos- 
pital equipments  have  become  features  of  modem 
life. 

We    can    simply    answer   that   growth   through 


130  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

struggle  is  the  only  possible  law  under  which 
moral  character  can  be  evolved.  The  very  exig- 
encies of  the  case  demanded  this  patient  waiting 
for  development.  This  scheme,  of  which  in  the 
physical  world  we  see  but  a  part,  was  the  only  pos- 
sible one  whereby  the  soul  of  man  could  at  last 
be  transformed  into  the  image  of  God,  that  "  one 
divine  event  to  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 

Hints  of  the  presence  of  electrical  energy  have 
been  given  out  everywhere  all  along  down  the  ages, 
but  not  until  the  last  seventy-five  years  has  the 
most  advanced  of  the  human  races  taken  advantage 
of  these  hints. 

Since  investigations  have  been  begun  in  down- 
right earnest,  progress  has  been  rapid  and  achieve- 
ments phenomenal. 

So  not  until  very  recent  years  has  the  true  na- 
ture of  prayer,  the  possibilities  of  its  accomplish- 
ment and  the  secret  sources  of  its  power  been 
rightly  understood,  and  in  consequence  it  fell  into 
sad  neglect. 

Certain  cold  formalities,  called  prayers,  which 
have  never  been  expected  to  be  answered,  have 
been  abundant,  but  real  prayers  that  well  up  out 
of  a  deep  soul-hunger,  embodying  an  unselfish 
love  and  inspired  by  a  reverent  faith  that  moves 
the  arm  that  moves  the  world,  how  few,  very  few. 

Let  us  hope  then  that  the  day  of  the  world's 
deliverance  is  at  hand,  that  the  materialistic  nine- 
teenth century  is  destined  to  be  superseded  by  a 
century  marked  by  a  new  idealism,  that  the  works 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  131 

and  powers  of  the  spirit  are  to  be  the  theme  of 
thought,  that  the  long  lost  power  of  the  Church, 
Christ's  legacy,  is   again  to  be  restored. 

Let  us  dismiss  all  lingering  doubt  of  our  being 
of  sufficient  worth  for  God  to  hear  when  we  call, 
or  that  he  has  not  made  ample  provision  in  order 
to  interfere  in  our  behalf  either  directly  or  in- 
directly, and  to  interfere  because  we  ask  him. 

God  being  able  to  forecast  the  general  trend, 
the  ordinary  tendencies,  of  the  lives  of  his  chil- 
dren, has  unquestionably  prearranged  his  provi- 
dences to  meet  their  probable  wants,  has  provided 
for  them  a  bountiful  environment  full  of  illimitable 
possibilities  of  joy  and  growth.  For  the  extraor- 
dinary and  unforeseen  he  has  made,  as  I  have 
shown,  provision  for  leaving  himself  ample  fa- 
cilities for  immediate  interference.  And  then,  too, 
by  timely  suggestions  he  may,  and  often  does,  make 
us  willing  and  intelligent  servitors  of  his  will,  in- 
augurating by  a  single  whispered  thought,  in  mo- 
ments of  crisis,  movements  of  deep  and  lasting 
import  in  our  own  or  others'  destiny. 

Thoroughly  conversant,  as  he  must  be,  with  all 
the  peculiar  mental  states  of  every  individual  as 
fast  as  they  arise,  his  seed-thoughts  fall  op- 
portunely into  responsive  soils  and  soon  quicken 
into  harvests.  A  word  dropped  into  the  mind  of 
a  young  Luther  starts  a  reformation  that  shakes 
to  its  very  center  the  papal  throne  of  the  world. 
As  Carlyle  says,  "  The  clock  strikes  when  there  is 
a  change  from  hour  to  hour,  but  there  is  no  ham- 


132  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

mer  in  the  horologue  of  time  to  peal  through  the 
universe  when  there  is  a  change  from  era  to  era." 
God  notes  those  pivotal  periods  and  uses  them. 

Any  human  will  obstinately  standing  in  the  way 
of  the  great  ongoings  of  his  providence,  as  it  cer- 
tainly can  as  long  as  it  is  free,  he  reserves  the 
power  of  either  temporarily  or  permanently  pla- 
cing under  duress.  Of  course,  while  thus  borne 
down  by  a  superior  personality,  while  deprived  of 
its  freedom  of  choice,  it  is  relieved  of  responsibility, 
its  acts  lose  their  moral  quality,  and  it  becomes  like 
any  other  force  in  nature.  It  is,  however,  respon- 
sible for  necessitating  such  summary  procedure. 
This  divine  impressment,  this  infringement  upon 
our  freedom,  may,  for  aught  we  know,  be  fre- 
quently resorted  to  in  the  course  of  individual  or  na- 
tional history.  We  certainly  are  the  arbiters  of  our 
destinies.  But  woe  betide  him  who  recklessly  dashes 
against  the  thick  bosses  of  Jehovah's  buckler. 
We  are  closely  hedged  in  by  carefully  constructed 
systems  of  inexorable  law.  We  can  break  those 
laws  if  we  choose,  but  we  do  it  at  our  peril.  We 
can  stand  out  persistently  against  all  God's  good 
influences ;  we  may  render  futile  his  utmost  efforts 
to  rescue  us  from  the  thraldom  of  sin.  The  whole 
race  may  combine  successfully  to  thwart  his  pur- 
poses of  love.  From  the  very  nature  of  the  case 
he  was  forced  to  incur  that  risk,  for  virtue  can  live 
only  in  an  atmosphere  of  liberty.  But  we  must 
remember  God's  unalterable  determination  from 
the   beginning  has   been  not  to   make   everybody 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  133 

loyal  and  loving,  but  simply  to  furnish  the 
possibilities  of  loyalty  and  love,  and  then  do  all  in 
his  power  consistent  with  the  conditions  precedent 
to  character-forming  to  develop  within  each  soul 
the  germs  of  divinity  of  his  own  hand's  planting. 
He  may  be  forced  to  summon  a  deluge,  or  an 
earthquake,  or  some  wasting  pestilence  to  do  his 
terrible  bidding;  he  may  be  forced  to  abandon 
what  after  trial  prove  ineffectual  methods,  and 
adopt  new  ones;  he  may  be  forced  to  recall  the 
gift  of  liberty,  or  the  very  gift  of  the  present 
form  of  existence  here  and  hereafter  from  those 
who  persistently  repel  all  proffers  and  become 
hopelessly  hardened;  but  his  loving  purpose  still 
holds  out,  his  laws  still  stand,  the  golden  oppor- 
tunities are  still  presented,  each  century  witnesses 
some  new  conquests  of  love,  some  souls  added  to 
heaven's  company,  the  great  scheme  is  steadily 
going  forward  to  its  finally  glorious  though  as  yet 
far  distant  consummation. 

Such  a  view  of  God  —  of  his  maturing  and  ex- 
ecuting plans,  of  his  intellectual  and  emotional 
life  —  as  I  have  endeavored  to  present,  is  the  only 
one,  after  all,  actually  conceivable  by  finite  minds. 
To  pronounce  him  unconditioned,  unchangeable, 
omniscient,  omnipotent,  omni-present,  using  these 
words  in  their  ordinary  and  fullest  acceptation, 
placing  no  restriction  upon  their  meaning,  is  sim- 
ply falling,  unintentionally,  no  doubt,  into  nothing 
less  than  word-jugglery,  affirming  what  to  human 
minds  must  of  necessity  be  absolutely  unthinkable. 


134  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

The  only  rational  course  is  to  take  for  our  basic 
thought  that  we  have  been  created  in  God's  image, 
and  then  to  picture  God  as  a  spirit  possessing  in 
perfection  attributes  analogous  to  our  own,  al- 
though these  are  yet  germinal  and  sin-distorted. 

I  am  now  ready  to  answer  the  question,  How  can 
we  reasonably  hope  by  our  petitions  to  effect  a 
change  in  the  Divine  purposes,  and  why  should  we 
plead  importunately,  why  kindle  our  souls  into  such 
intensity  of  fervor?  The  Scriptures,  in  enjoining 
earnestness,  need  not  be  understood  as  favoring  at- 
tempts to  coax  and  tease  God,  as  we  too  frequently 
do  our  earthly  parents,  to  act  against  his  better 
judgment  out  of  some  weak,  short-sighted  sym- 
pathy. If  that  be  our  purpose,  we  may  be  certain 
of  flat  failure.  Our  prayers  will  never  induce  him 
to  deal  any  more  generously  with  us.  He  has  al- 
ways stood  with  outstretched  arms,  with  overflow- 
ing sympathy,  waiting  impatiently  to  bless  us. 
What  untold  wealth  of  deep  inventive  thought, 
what  untold  eons  of  slowly  passing  years  he  has 
already  lavished  in  his  preparations  for  our  com- 
ing, for  our  maintenance,  for  our  unfolding,  for 
our  permanent  weal!  Wliile  our  prayers  will  not 
make  him  any  more  kindly  disposed,  will  not  notice- 
ably increase  his  sympathy  for  us,  they  will  in  most 
marked  measure  increase  his  sympathy  with  us,  will 
profoundly  change  our  attitude  toward  him  and 
multiply  our  capacity  for  blessing  ten  thousand- 
fold. Indeed,  so  radical  is  the  change  wrought, 
that  what  would  have  been  poison  before,  becomes 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  135 

medicine  now.  We  thus  furnish  God  new  facts 
upon  which  to  act,  facts  of  mental  attitude,  the  un- 
foreseen outputs  of  our  sovereignty.  That  atti- 
tude is  one  of  Christ-like  love,  manifesting  itself  in 
five  forms  —  that  of  willing  obedience,  of  self-sacri- 
ficing service,  of  sense  of  Divine  dependence,  of 
restful  confidence,  and  of  intensest  longing.  Until 
that  attitude  is  attained  in  all  these  prime  essen- 
tials, as  I  have  already  explained,  God,  if  he  should 
interfere  by  stepping  outside  his  general  provi- 
dence, in  which  the  evil  and  the  good  are  served 
alike,  to  confer  especial  favors,  would  be  doing 
violence  to  his  conceptions  of  fitness  and  of  true 
beneficence,  would  work  his  children  a  most  positive 
injury,  placing  a  premium  on  qualities  that  stand 
over  against  these  forms  of  love,  thereby  counte- 
nancing a  spirit  of  rebellion,  selfishness,  self-suffi- 
ciency, distrust  and  ignoble  apathy.  It  is  the 
fervent  prayer  of  the  righteous  man  that  availeth 
much.  He  must  be  righteous  and  his  righteous- 
ness must  be  on  fire  to  fulfill  the  Scripture  condi- 
tions. That  availing  power  is  something  more 
than  retroactive;  it  moves  the  arm  that  moves  the 
world.  As  this  is  a  moral  state  of  the  soul  within 
the  circle  of  its  sovereignty,  the  product  of  its  ab- 
solutely free  choice,  there  cannot  be,  as  I  have 
shown,  any  sure  prophecy  of  its  coming.  But 
when  it  comes,  all  barriers  are  burnt  away.  Re- 
serve gives  place  to  closest  sympathetic  intimacy. 
What  more  natural  when  the  spirits  of  father  and 
son  thus  meet  and  mingle,  than  that  the  son,  care- 


136  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

cumbered  it  may  be,  or  broken  with  grief,  or  baffled 
in  purpose,  though  battling  still,  should  pour  out 
in  most  impassioned  utterance  his  deep  and  noble 
longings?  Love  itself  would  so  prompt;  for  love 
casteth  out  fear,  is  the  very  essence  of  liberty. 
Cautious  reserve  cannot  live  in  its  atmosphere  of 
holy  confidence.  All  curtains  of  concealment  fall 
instantly  at  the  magic  touch  of  sympathy.  He 
could  not  keep  his  longings  back.  His  father's 
tender  look  and  tone  would  break  the  seals  of 
silence,  would  touch  his  lips  with  coals  of  fire. 
The  thought  of  trying  by  coaxing  to  melt  down 
his  stern  reluctance  is  utterly  foreign  to  such  a 
scene,  repugnant  to  such  a  state,  and  was  never 
contemplated  in  the  Gospel.  What  more  natural 
than  that  God's  heart  should  be  deeply  stirred  by 
the  fervid  outflow  of  such  a  passion  of  love  and 
longing,  and  that  he  should  by  direct  will-power 
supply  the  deficiencies  of  his  general  providence, 
or  by  timely  suggestion  reveal  its  resources,  and 
place  them  in  reach  to  meet  the  needs  of  such  a 
soul  in  such  an  hour? 

These  views  are  not  only  thus  in  deep  accord 
with  the  principles  of  sound  philosophy  and  the 
revelations  of  modem  science,  but  also  with  the 
profoundest  intuitions  of  human  hearts ;  for  when 
once  our  sense  of  world-dependence  and  of  self- 
sufficiency  is  rudely  swept  away  by  some  disaster, 
and  we  come  intently  to  long  for  what  we  find  we 
cannot  reach  without  God's  help,  how  soon  we 
brush    aside    all    hindering    creeds,    and    in    dead 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  137 

earnest  plead  our  case,  and  plead  believing  that 
the  heart  and  arm  of  God  will  answer  to  our  plea ! 
But  in  this  intensely  materialistic  and  scientific  age 
there  have  so  insidiously  settled  about  our  thought 
the  bewildering  fogs  of  learned  and  subtile  sophis- 
tries breathed  out  by  those  who  would  either  rele- 
gate God  altogether  from  his  universe  or  make  his 
relations  quite  inconsequential  and  remote,  that 
only  in  the  stress  of  crises  in  our  history  do  our 
long-neglected  religious  intuitions  assume  their 
rightful  sovereignty,  and  restore  us  to  our  true 
relations  with  him  who  in  his  great  love  never 
wearies  in  caring  for  his  own.  But  may  we  not 
hope  that  the  night  is  well-nigh  spent,  that  the 
fogs  are  lifting,  that  a  new  day  dawns  —  a  day  of 
deeper,  clearer,  truer  thought,  of  more  perfect 
knowledge,  of  more  enlightened  faith,  and  a  faith 
whose  kindly  light  will  prove  the  sure  harbinger  of 
God's  perfect  day? 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 


I  have  thus  far  endeavored  to  show  — 

1.  How  God  may  interfere  whenever  he  chooses; 

2.  That  there  are  incontestable  evidences,  and 
multitudes  of  them  along  down  the  centuries,  that 
he  has  thus  actually  interfered; 

3.  That  we  are  warranted  in  believing  that  we, 
each  one  of  us,  the  humblest  and  most  obscure,  are 
of  sufficient  consequence  to  attract  his  attention 
and  secure  this  his  direct  interference;  and 

4.  That  he  will  interfere  because  we  ask  him, 
doing  for  us  what  otherwise  he  would  not  have 
done. 

There  is  left  for  me  now  but  one  other  general 
affirmation  to  make.  With  its  explanation  and 
proof  I  believe  I  shall  have  presented  the  subject 
in  all  its  essential  phases.  It  is  this :  Every 
reasonable  prayer  offered  in  a  right  spirit  is  certain 
of  favorable  answer.  This  is  the  clear  import  of 
Christ's  comprehensive  promise  to  his  disciples,  as 
recorded  in  Matthew,  "  All  things  whatsoever  ye 
shall  ask  in  prayer,  believing,  ye  shall  receive,"  or, 
as  Mark  states  it,  "  Whatsoever  things  ye  desire, 
when  ye  pray,  believe  that  ye  receive  them,  and  ye 
shall  have  them."  If  we  interpret  these  passages 
in  the  light  of  the  context  and  of  the  general 
trend  of  Christ's  teachings,  we  cannot  but  con- 
clude that  Christ  premised  in  his  promise  that  the 
138 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  139 

prayers  should  be  reasonable  and  that  they  should 
be  offered  in  the  right  spirit.  No  petitioner  who 
complies  with  these  two  conditions  need  ever  fear 
failure. 

To  have  our  prayers  reasonable,  we  should,  in 
the  first  place,  guard  against  asking  for  anything 
which  we  can  procure  by  our  own  exertions,  mak- 
ing use  of  the  resources  of  physical  and  mental 
strength,  of  social  ties  and  general  surroundings 
already  in  reach.  God  is  a  strict  economist.  If 
he  has  already  made  ample  provisions  in  his  gen- 
eral providence,  and  if  we  ourselves  can  by  proper 
industry  discover  and  utilize  this  provision,  we 
ought  not  to  expect  from  him  any  further  help  by 
special  act.  We  must  exhaust  our  own  means  first, 
and  ask  him  simply  to  supplement  our  weakness 
and  insufficiency.  Otherwise  we  should  be  asking 
not  only  for  what  God  has  really  already  bestowed 
—  and  bestowed  in  a  way  which  he  thought  would 
do  us  the  greatest  and  most  lasting  good  —  but  for 
what,  if  granted  again  in  this  more  direct  manner, 
would  prove  to  us  a  positive  bane,  and  not  a  bless- 
ing; and  if  such  a  course  were  continued,  all  in- 
centive to  industry  and  enterprise  would  thus  be 
taken  away,  physical  and  mental  sloth  would  suc- 
ceed to  healthful,  growth-promoting  activity,  ab- 
ject timidity  and  feeling  of  dependence  would  take 
the  place  of  a  manly  spirit  of  self-reliance.  No 
wise  parent  among  us,  however  keen  and  quick  his 
sympathies,  would  ever  consent  thus  to  shield  his 
child  from  toil  and  care  and  battle-test,  for  he 


140  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

knows  he  would  by  dandling  him  thus  in  the  lap  of 
ease  and  luxury  be  sure  to  unman  him,  weaken  his 
body  and  invite  disease,  dull  the  edge  of  his  facul- 
ties and  rob  him  of  every  prospect  of  progress,  of 
every  trace  of  nobility,  of  everything  that  gives 
zest  and  incentive  and  joy  to  life  and  gilds  the 
future  with  its  pencilings  of  glory.  Wise  teachers 
refrain  from  helping  their  pupils  so  long  as  they 
can  help  themselves.  Their  office  is  not  to  relieve 
but  to  incite,  not  to  dwarf  but  draw  out,  not  to 
convert  those  under  their  charge  into  cowering 
weaklings  but  into  athletes  and  conquerors.  Even 
the  eagle,  prompted  by  a  Divine  wisdom,  will  push 
her  timid  fledgelings  out  from  their  lofty  eyrie- 
home,  and  watch  them  flutter,  and  hear  their  cry  of 
distress  as  they  disappear  down  the  sides  of  the 
gorges;  keeping  herself,  however,  meantime,  in 
ready  reach,  and  now  and  then  darting  under  to 
save  them  from  fatal  fall,  for  God  has  taught  this 
mother  thus  to  throw  her  children  on  their  own 
resources,  that  they  may  feel  their  wings  and  learn 
to  use  them.  This  is  a  rude  awakening.  It  seems 
a  cruel  banishment.  But  otherwise  they  would 
never  learn  to  poise  and  wheel  in  air,  to  dart  like 
thunderbolts,  to  breast  the  hurricane,  or  to  climb 
the  steep  stairways  of  the  sky. 

God  loves  us  too  well  to  heed  any  of  our  cries 
except  in  times  of  positive  and  pressing  need.  He 
will  let  us  stiTiggle  alone  until  our  strength  and 
judgment  fail.  He  will,  however,  always  keep  in 
call,  and  will,  in  deepest  sympathy,  watch  the  con- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  141 

test  point  by  point,  and  we  can  rest  assured  that  in 
the  hour  of  our  extremity,  should  such  hour  come, 
we  shall  be  made  gladly  conscious  of  some  answer- 
ing heartbeat,  shall  hear  some  whispered  word, 
shall  feel  the  uplifting  power  of  some  helping  hand 
of  love.  A  prayer  for  God  to  convert  our  impeni- 
tent friends  would  be  unreasonable  if  without  con- 
ditions or  provisos,  as  it  might  be  utterly  impossi- 
ble for  him  to  secure  such  a  result.  All  we  can 
sensibly  ask  for  is  that  he  will  make  use  of  all  the 
instrumentalities  at  his  command,  arrest  the  atten- 
tion, rouse  the  conscience,  reveal  the  danger  of 
delay,  the  consequences  of  continued  rebellion  as 
well  as  of  loving  obedience  —  in  a  word,  bring  to 
bear  all  the  persuasive  influences  possible  and  still 
leave  their  wills  untrammeled,  for  without  absolute 
freedom  of  choice  being  constantly  maintained,  no 
moral  change  can  possibly  be  wrought. 

Again,  our  prayers  to  be  reasonable  must  be 
consistent  in  all  their  parts,  must  be  free  from  con- 
tradictory requests.  To  answer  prayers  in  their 
entirety  would  sometimes  be  impossible  even  to  God. 
To  illustrate:  It  would  be  inconsistent  for  us  to 
ask  only  for  the  agreeable  things  of  this  life  —  for 
freedom  from  care,  sorrow,  and  pain  —  from  dis- 
appointment, privation,  calumny  —  from  all  the 
vexations,  perplexities  and  disasters  of  life  —  and 
at  the  same  time  that  he  would  develop  in  us  that 
glorious  Christ-likeness  for  which,  in  our  nobler 
inspired  moments,  we  so  intently  long;  as  well  ask 
for  the  knit  sinews  of  an  athlete,  while  nestling  in 


142  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

undisturbed  repose  In  the  padded  sleepy  hollows  of 
a  rocking-chair.  The  ignoble  fate  of  a  soul  set 
free  from  life's  carking  care  and  environed  with  all 
that  the  most  cultured  civilization  could  suggest, 
Tennyson,  in  his  "  Palace  of  Art,"  has  pictured 
with  a  master  hand.  If  we  would  be  like  Christ,  we 
must  pass  through  Christ's  school  of  experience. 
He  needed  the  discipline  of  suffering  and  struggle, 
as  well  as  we.  He  began  where  we  begin  —  in 
perfect  innocency  yet  characterless,  possessing  sim- 
ply the  possibilities  of  virtue  totally  undeveloped. 
It  is  because  he  afterward  became  a  hero,  battle- 
taught,  battle-tested,  battle-scarred,  and  yet  never 
knew  defeat;  it  is  because  he  through  faith 
wrought  righteousness,  out  of  weakness  was  made 
strong,  endured  the  cross,  despising  the  shame, 
suffered  long  and  was  kind,  sought  not  his  own, 
was  not  easily  provoked,  thought  no  evil,  rejoiced 
not  in  iniquity  but  rejoiced  in  the  truth,  bore  all 
things,  believed  all  things,  endured  all  things,  loved 
us  with  a  love  that  never  failed  and  loved  us  to 
the  end, —  it  is  because  of  this,  Christ  has  stood 
before  the  ages,  and  will  stand,  as  the  Peerless 
One,  the  Revelator  of  the  Divine  Heart,  the  Lib- 
erator and  Saviour  of  mankind,  the  Prince  of 
Peace.  We  must  bear  Christ's  cross,  would  we 
wear  his  crown. 

Then  answered  the  Lord  to  the  cry  of  his  world 

Shall  I  take  away  pain 
And  with  it  the  power  of  the  soul  to  endure 

Made  strong  by  the  strain? 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  143 

Shall  I  take  away  pity  that  knits  heart  to  heart 

And  sacrifice  high? 
Will  ye  lose  all  your  heroes  that  lift  from  the  fire 

White  brows  to  the  sky? 
Shall  I  take  away  love  that  redeems  with  a  price 

And  smiles  at  the  loss? 
Can  ye  spare  from  your  lives  that  would  climb  into 
mine 

The  Christ  on  his  cross? 

We  fall  into  these  contradictions  in  our  prayers, 
through  a  total  misconception  of  the  design  of 
this  life.  Evolution,  not  unalloyed  present 
pleasure,  is  the  purpose  now.  We  have  been 
housed  in  perishable  bodies  full  of  quivering 
nerves;  have  been  environed  with  antagonistic 
forces  that  threaten  and  thwart  us  at  every  turn ; 
our  paths  have  been  left  rough  and  full  of  dan- 
gerous pitfalls ;  poisons  pervade  much  of  the  air 
we  breathe,  the  water  we  drink,  the  food  we  take 
to  repair  these  weak  clay  tenements.  To  millions, 
life  is  a  heavy  care-burden,  a  fierce  contest,  and 
how  frequently  is  it  one  long  catastrophe  made 
up  of  broken  hopes  and  baffled  purposes,  of  weari- 
ness and  scalding  tears  and  sighs  for  rest!  Why 
is  it?  Is  this  life  a  stupendous  failure?  If  there 
is  no  beyond  for  which  it  is  preparing,  it  most 
certainly  is.  If  there  is  no  beyond  in  which  other 
and  fully  sufficient  opportunities  will  be  afforded 
for  reformation  and  restoration  and  ultimately 
glorious  development  as  God  first  planned,  then 
for  these  untold  millions  who  have  been  afforded 


144  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

scant  means  and  scant  capacities  in  this  initial 
being  through  some  as  yet  unexplained  though 
doubtless  in  their  case  unavoidable  necessities, 
God's  scheme  of  life  is  surely  a  stupendous  failure. 
But,  as  we  most  sincerely  believe,  he  has  not  fin- 
ished with  them  yet.  Tennyson's  query  and  reply 
in  his  "  In  Memoriam "  we  may  well  make  our 
own. 

"  What  hope  of  answer  and  redress  ? 
Behind  the  veil,  behind  the  veil." 

Could  not  God  have  shielded  his  children  from 
suffering  and  struggle?  Yes:  but  not  without 
hopelessly  excluding  them  from  all  prospect  of 
spiritual  progress,  leaving  them  forever  on  the 
low  plane  of  ignoble,  irresponsible  brute  life.  The 
error  is  widely  prevalent,  that  God  has  by  some 
arbitrary  decision  established  the  great  underlying 
principles  that  determine  moral  character,  and  can 
at  will  change  the  conditions  of  spiritual  growth. 
No  more  mischievous  confusion  of  thought  can 
possibly  be  entertained.  These  principles  and 
conditions  must  reach  back  indefinitely,  can  of 
necessity  have  had  no  beginning,  and  cannot  be 
susceptible  of  the  slightest  change;  for  othei'wise 
before  their  establishment  God  could  not  have  been 
possessed  of  any  moral  attribute,  or  have  had  for 
his  own  governance  any  standard  of  moral  life. 
He  cannot  change  them  or  set  them  aside;  for  a 
moment's  reflection  will  disclose  that  not  even  he 
can  convert  selfishness  into  a  virtue,  or  place  heart- 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  14.5 

less  cruelty  on  a  par  with  a  spirit  of  self -forget- 
ting love. 

What  he  has  done  for  us  in  this  regard  is  to 
give  power  of  free  choice,  and  capacity  for  moral 
discernment,  and  to  place  us  in  moral  relations 
with  himself  and  with  our  fellows,  and  to  establish 
us  amid  such  surroundings  as  are  fitted  by  their 
disciplinary  processes  to  develop  into  glorious  fact 
what  are  at  the  first  but  bare  possibilities  of 
virtue.  We  may,  if  we  choose,  stand  true  to  these 
eternal  principles  of  obligation,  live  in  loving 
harmony  with  these  many-sided  relationships  of 
life,  and  thereby  grow  into  Divine  likeness,  or  we 
may  persistently  refuse  to  conform,  and  shut 
against  our  souls  forever  this  only  open  door  to 
hope,  miss  forever  this  only  opportunity  to  win 
eternal  life.  Simply  these  possibilities  are  or  can 
be  of  Divine  gift.  Virtues  God  cannot  bestow: 
they  must  be  born  of  battle.  Dark  as  were 
Christ's  forebodings  of  the  coming  afflictions  of 
his  disciples,  deeply  as  he  longed  to  save  them 
from  the  imprisonments  and  scourgings  and  cruel 
deaths  which  awaited  them,  he,  in  that  last  prayer 
so  memorable  for  its  deep,  pathetic  tenderness, 
prayed  not  that  his  Father  would  take  them  out 
of  the  world  and  save  them  from  its  sufferings 
and  from  its  spiritual  exposures,  but  only  that  he 
would  keep  them  from  the  evil,  from  being  finally 
overmastered  and  borne  down  by  the  terrible 
power  of  the  tempter.  God  could  not  save  even 
his  Son,  his  best  beloved.     He  could  by  his  crea- 


146  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

tlve  word  speak  a  universe  into  being,  but  he  could 
not  set  aside  or  render  less  exacting  a  single  one 
of  the  laws  of  spiritual  unfolding,  even  for  Christ 
himself,  though  through  those  long  night  watches 
in  Gethsemane  his  shrinking  human  soul  plead  for 
relief  with  an  agony  so  intense  as  to  cause  his  body 
to  sweat  great  drops  of  blood.  Christ,  with  his 
human  limitations  of  knowledge,  seemed  to  hope 
that  God  might  in  some  way  avert  the  impending 
doom  and  still  accomplish  the  objects  of  his  mis- 
sion, and  so  he  prayed,  "  Father,  if  it  be  possible, 
let  this  cup  pass  from  me."  Yet  while  God  could 
not  save  him  from  that  hour,  he  no  doubt  whispered 
words  of  comfort,  gave  assurances  of  his  deep- 
felt  sympathy,  promised  his  loving  presence  and 
sustaining  grace  through  it  all,  and,  once  his  mis- 
sion ended,  a  glad  and  honored  welcome  to  the 
skies. 

What  God  did  for  Christ  and  for  his  disciples  he 
will  do  for  us,  and  for  this  we  may  most  con- 
fidently pray,  that  he  will  not  suffer  us  to  be 
tempted  above  that  we  are  able  to  bear,  but  will 
with  the  temptation  provide  some  way  of  escape, 
some  way  to  glorious  and  final  victory.  His  pur- 
pose is  to  supplement,  not  supplant.  He  will 
send  angels  to  minister,  will  grant  moments  of  re- 
spite, and  glimpses  of  glory. 

Let  us  not  mistake  God's  plan  and  our  privi- 
lege, and  supinely  fold  our  hands  thinking  that 
all  the  care-burdens,  and  griefs  and  racking  pains 
of  this  life   are   divinely   sent  and  to   be  meekly 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  147 

borne,  but  rather  remember  that  while  this  world 
is  full  of  dangers  and  disasters  it  is  also  full  of 
curative  forces,  while  our  bodies  are  subject  to 
disease  all  their  tissues  tend  towards  health.  In 
this  we  find  our  divine  warrant  to  relieve  the  stress 
whenever  and  wherever  we  can.  In  searching  out 
and  applying  the  remedies  and  in  bravely  bearing 
the  burdens  when  remedies  finally  fail  we  may 
convert  them  into  disciplinary  blessings,  into  up- 
lifts in  the  spiritual  life.  We  ought  not  to  regard 
all  ills  as  specially  sent  but  simply  as  results  of 
a  widely  comprehensive  plan,  the  output  of  general 
delegated  forces,  that  many  of  them  are  prevent- 
ive, many  due  to  carelessness  and  ignorance  and 
willful  violations  of  known  law,  and  that  it  is  not 
only  our  privilege  but  positive  duty  to  try  and 
lessen  the  stress  by  removing  the  causes  through 
the  varied  helps  afforded  us.  When  we  have 
rightly  striven  and  rightly  prayed  and  there  are 
burdens  still  to  be  borne,  then  and  not  till  then, 
we  may  feel  assured  that  God  wants  us  to  bear 
them  and  bear  them  bravely.  God  is  on  the  side 
of  order,  of  health,  of  happiness.  Eventually  no 
doubt,  it  is  his  purpose  to  root  out  all  abnormality 
through  human  instrumentality  and  by  his  own  per- 
sonal interference  through  the  many  avenues  and 
agencies  he  has  with  such  careful  forethought  pro- 
vided. He,  of  course,  could  bring  this  about  at 
once  without  our  help;  he  could  have  prevented  it 
at  the  first,  but  in  so  doing  he  would  have  been 
forced  to  shut  against  us  forever  the  very  gates 


148  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

of  Paradise.     Now  and  here  is  laid  upon  us  the 
double  command,  work  and  wait,  watch  and  pray. 

Our  prayers  must  thus,  not  only  be  reasonable, 
but  they  must  also  be  offered  in  the  right  spirit. 
The  want  must  be  deeply  felt,  and  there  must  be 
a  whole-souled  earnestness  in  the  plea,  accom- 
panied with  a  willingness  to  make  any  exertion, 
and  undergo  any  sacrifice,  for  the  attainment  of 
the  end.  Until  this  be  our  attitude,  we  are  not 
yet  worthy  of  the  help,  are  not  in  the  mood  to 
appreciate  it,  and  have  not  the  capacity  to  ap- 
propriate its  blessings ;  neither  have  we  prepared 
the  way  for  God's  interference,  as  we  have  not 
fully  exhausted  our  own  resources,  and  thus  dis- 
closed the  fact,  the  amount,  and  the  nature  of  our 
need.  Our  prayers  should  therefore  be  premedi- 
tated, should  embody  only  what  we  intently  long 
for,  what  we  are  convinced  we  truly  require,  what 
after  repeated  trial  we  find  otherwise  beyond  our 
reach,  and  what  in  order  to  obtain  we  are  willing  to 
sacrifice  any  lower  pleasures  that  stand  in  their 
way. 

Having  thus,  after  most  careful  reflection,  de- 
termined the  nature  of  our  requests,  being  willing 
to  pay  the  cost  involved  in  the  grant,  we  should 
come  boldly  to  our  Father,  and  in  full  faith  plead 
our  cause,  and  then  set  about  life's  duties  perfectly 
confident  of  a  favorable  answer. 

There  must  be  this  childlike  faith;  for  Christ's 
words  of  promise  were,  "  Therefore  I  say  unto 
you,  What  things  soever  ye  desire  when  ye  pray, 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  149 

believe  that  ye  receive  them,  and  ye  shall  have 
them."  Christ  demanded  it  of  those  upon  whom 
he  wrought  miracles  of  healing :  "  Stretch  forth 
thy  hand,"  "Take  up  thy  Led,"  "Go  wash." 
In  the  command  to  make  the  effort,  there  was 
clearly  implied  the  promise  to  add  the  strength; 
but  the  effort  must  be  made  in  most  trustful  con- 
fidence before  the  Divine  reenforcement  would 
come.  We  with  good  reason  rely  implicitly  upon 
the  trustworthiness  of  nature's  divinely  derived 
physical  forces.  We  are  willing  to  stake,  and  in 
fact  do  stake  again  and  again,  our  very  lives  and 
fortunes  on  our  belief  in  their  promptly  answer- 
ing to  our  call  the  very  moment  certain  conditions 
are  fulfilled,  and  in  the  surety  we  feel  in  their  hon- 
oring to  the  letter  the  terms  of  their  commission. 
Why  not  as  confidently  rely  on  that  more  direct 
Divine  force  for  whose  help  we  pray,  for  it  is  in 
as  true  a  sense  conditional,  with  conditions  as  ex- 
act, and  it  is  as  prompt  and  ready  to  render  serv- 
ice the  instant  those  conditions  are  complied  with? 
Rest  assured  not  until  we  throw  ourselves  as  un- 
reservedly on  the  arm  of  the  Almighty  as  we  do 
on  the  operations  of  these  lower  delegated  forces, 
and  this  faith  is  inwrought  into  the  very  texture 
of  our  lives,  can  the  blessing  come. 

To  have  the  right  spirit  when  we  pray,  we  must 
also  have  our  thoughts  purged  thoroughly  from 
all  forms  of  selfishness.  It  would  seem  that  so 
patent  a  truth  requires  not  even  a  statement;  but 
this  element  presents  such  protean  forms,  it  is  so 


160  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

subtle,  assumes  so  many  disguises,  borrowing  the 
very  livery  of  heaven,  that  even  the  elect  are  many 
times  self-deceived. 

Every  reasonable  prayer  offered  thus  in  a  right 
spirit  is  certain  of  favorable  answer.  The  bless- 
ings bestowed  will  be  either  specifically  or  sub- 
stantially what  we  ask;  specifically  when  the  objects 
sought  prove  to  be  or  to  embody  what  they  seem. 
This  is  not  always,  and  perhaps  not  often,  the 
case;  and  because  of  that,  the  blessings  are  sub- 
stantially rather  than  specifically  granted.  To 
illustrate:  I  remember  some  years  ago  noticing  in 
a  show-window  what  appeared  to  be  a  basket  of 
most  luscious  fruit.  The  forms  and  the  delicate 
shadings  were  remarkable  facsimiles  of  nature's 
handiwork.  The  bloom  was  on  the  peach  and  the 
plum  and  the  purple  cluster.  On  the  cheek  of 
the  apple  glowed  those  brilliant  sunset  tints  we 
BO  admire.  The  rich,  juicy  look  of  the  sliced 
melon  was  brought  out  most  marvelously.  It  was 
a  masterpiece  of  art.  I  have  often  thought  how 
differently  my  little  boy,  had  he  been  with  me, 
would  have  looked  on  this  overflowing  basket. 
To  him  it  would  have  been  a  complete  deception, 
and  he  no  doubt  would  have  plead  with  me  to  make 
him  the  happy  possessor  of  it, —  not  that  he 
might  feast  his  eyes,  but  his  palate.  The  cool 
flavors,  not  the  colorings  and  curves  of  beauty, 
would  have  filled  his  fancy.  A  specific  answer  to 
his  plea  would  have  been  a  downright  disappoint- 
ment, a  disillusion,  which  he  would  not  at  all  have 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  151 

relished,  for  he  would  have  found  it  but  a  cunning 
device  of  paint  and  plaster.  To  have  obtained 
for  him  the  fruit  itself,  of  which  he  saw  only  a 
skilful  imitation,  would  have  been  to  have  answered 
his  prayer  substantially  and  to  have  satisfied  his 
real  longings. 

Many  point  to  the  case  of  President  Garfield 
as  a  notable  instance  of  the  failure  of  the  prayer 
test.  Countless  petitions  went  up  from  loving  and 
anxious  hearts  for  his  recovery,  and  yet  he  died. 
Because  God  did  not  answer  these  prayers  specif- 
ically, it  is  strenuously  contended  that  he  did  not 
answer  them  at  all.  But  how  can  we,  with  our 
extremely  limited  knowledge,  pronounce  intelli- 
gently on  a  matter  so  complicate,  involving  so 
many  interests  personal,  domestic,  and  national? 
Is  it  not  possible  that  God  conferred  substantially 
the  blessings  sought,  and  that  the  profits  and 
pleasures  which  we  supposed  would  flow  from 
Garfield's  continuance  in  the  private  home  circle 
and  in  his  exalted  post  of  public  service  were  ab- 
solutely insignificant  compared  with  what  his  mar- 
tyrdom could  under  Divine  guidance  be  made  to 
yield?  God  very  easily  could  have  thwarted  the 
fell  purpose  of  the  assassin,  and  that  vast  volume 
of  agonizing  prayer  would  never  have  ascended 
to  his  throne  from  this  stricken  people.  But  do 
you  not  remember  how  that  event  melted  into  most 
loving  sympathy  the  hearts,  not  only  of  all  sections 
of  this  great  nation,  but  of  all  the  civilized  coun- 
tries on  the  globe?     Garfield's  suffering  and  death 


162  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

gave  to  this  generation,  under  God's  beneficent 
overruling,  a  spiritual  impetus  and  exaltation 
which  this  eminent  statesman,  through  a  life  how- 
ever long  and  prosperous,  might  never  have 
secured.  That  prayerful  and  nobly  sympathetic 
attitude  of  all  good  people  unquestionably  made 
it  possible,  as  nothing  else  could,  for  God  to  thus 
convert  this  seeming  catastrophe  into  a  most  blessed 
benefaction. 

Perhaps  he  saw  such  combination  of  qualities  in 
Garfield's  character  and  in  the  character  of  his 
counselors  as  to  him  seemed  ominous  of  evil. 
There  is  many  a  danger  signal  which  we  do  not 
detect,  or  even  suspect  to  exist.  It  may  be,  too, 
God  thus  sought  to  impress  upon  us  again  one 
of  those  lessons  taught  in  President  Lincoln's 
sudden  death,  just  as  the  terrible  war-clouds  were 
lifting,  that  a  nation's  strength  and  safety  de- 
pend not  upon  any  frail  human  life,  but  upon 
the  cherishing  of  right  principles  and  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  Divine  care.  For  our  earthly 
bereavements  and  losses  we  may,  if  we  will,  secure 
priceless  compensations,  "  for  our  light  affliction, 
which  is  but  for  a  moment,  worketh  for  us  a  far 
more  exceeding  and  eternal  weight  of  glory." 

What  deep  peace  has  come,  and  will  come  still 
as  the  years  go  by,  to  that  once  weeping  home 
circle,  through  the  ever  sacred  memories  of  the 
dead!  What  fondly  cherished  hopes  have  been 
awakened  of  glad  reunions  in  that  golden  by- 
and-by ! 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  153 

The  results  to  President  Garfield  himself  of  his 
weeks  of  suffering,  and  final  exchange  of  worlds, 
while  right  at  the  very  zenith  of  his  power  and 
his  popularity,  we  have  very  inadequate  means  of 
measuring;  for  directly  behind  him,  as  he  an- 
swered the  summons,  there  fell  an  impenetrable 
veil  of  mystery.  Perhaps,  when  we  too  have 
crossed  the  river,  we  shall  find  that  those  prayers 
for  life  were  answered  by  the  gift  of  larger, 
grander  life  than  he  in  his  loftiest  moods  had  ever 
dreamed  of  getting. 

It  frequently  occurs  that  most  earnest  prayers 
are  offered  to  promote  what  appear  to  be  directly 
antagonistic  interests.  This  fact  came  out  very 
prominently  during  our  late  Civil  War.  For  each 
of  the  fiercely  contending  armies,  victory  was  pas- 
sionately plead  for  by  most  devout  believers. 
Who  would  question  the  sterling  integrity  or  re- 
ligious fervor  of  Stonewall  Jackson?  and,  as  we 
well  know,  he  fought  as  he  prayed.  He  imperiled 
his  life  and  finally  gave  it  as  a  noble  sacrifice  to 
the  Southern  cause.  Were  his  prayers  unavailing? 
Did  God  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  pleadings  of  this 
earnest,  self-sacrificing  disciple?  Most  assuredly 
not,  though  specifically  his  prayer  was  denied. 
Those  who  fought  with  him  side  by  side,  and 
shared  his  local  loves  and  aspirations,  but  who 
have  been  spared  to  see  this  day  and  to  enjoy  the 
phenomenal  prosperity  of  the  New  South, —  its 
quickened  pulse,  the  development  of  its  inexhaust- 
ible  mineral   resources,   the  birth  of  its   gigantic 


154  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

manufacturing  enterprises,  its  improved  agricul- 
ture, its  rapidly  growing  cities,  its  business  en- 
largement everywhere,  and,  more  than  all,  its 
intellectual  and  moral  renascence,  and  the  ushering 
in  of  a  new  era  of  permanent  peace,  of  genuine 
fraternal  feeling,  binding  it  in  indissoluble  union 
with  those  whom  it  once  faced  as  foes  on  stricken 
fields, —  those  who  have  thus  lived  to  see  this  day, 
with  its  rich  blessings  already  realized  and  with  its 
assured  prophecies  of  vastly  multiplied  prosperi- 
ties, recognize  now  that  God,  while  he  swept  away 
their  cherished  institution  of  slavery  and  denied 
them  Southern  autonomy,  suffered  their  land  to 
be  overrun  with  devastating  war,  their  homes  to  be 
left  desolate,  and  their  once  proud  banners  to 
be  torn  by  cannon  shot  and  trailed  in  the  dust, 
not  only  granted  them  the  real  blessings  which  they 
sought,  but  multiplied  them  ten  thousandfold. 
They  lamentably  erred,  as  they  are  now  free  to 
confess,  as  to  the  channels  through  which  those 
blessings  could  come,  and  they  have  lived  to  thank 
God  that  he,  in  his  deeper  wisdom  and  in  his 
larger  love,  himself  chose  the  means  through  which 
he  should  bestow  his  gifts. 

We  have  discovered  in  the  physical  universe 
multitudes  of  deadly  poisons,  hidden  under  vari- 
ous disguises,  bearing  remarkably  close  resem- 
blance to  substances  that  are  useful  and  life- 
giving.  Many  of  them  elude  our  senses  altogether. 
We  fail  even  with  our  microscopes  and  our  most 
careful    chemical   tests    to    tear   off   their   masks. 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  155 

We  learn  of  their  presence  only  by  their  alarm- 
ing mischief-making.  How  many  of  our  serious 
diseases  are  traceable  to  these  inimical  forces,  that 
lurk  in  the  air  and  water,  in  the  vegetable  and 
animal  foods,  which  we  take  into  our  systems  un- 
suspectingly !  We  are  also  exposed  to  intellectual 
and  moral  poisons  as  subtile,  as  concealed,  as 
deadly,  as  these  which  threaten  us  in  the  world  of 
matter.  How  true  it  is,  we  are  *'  but  children 
crying  in  the  night,  crying  for  the  light,  and 
with  no  language  but  a  cry,"  so  little  certain 
knowledge  have  we  of  what  will  do  us  good!  and 
yet,  with  what  unseemly  haste  we  let  go  our  faith, 
and  think  our  prayers  unheard,  so  soon  as  any  of 
these  hidden  poisons  are  denied ! 

I  remember  reading  in  my  early  school  days, 
in  one  of  the  text-books,  of  a  nobleman,  who, 
while  on  his  return  from  a  long  hunt  with  his 
favorite  hawk  on  a  hot  summer's  day,  filled  his 
cup  from  a  sparkling  rivulet  that  was  leaping 
down  the  sides  of  the  mountain.  As  he  was  lift- 
ing it  to  his  parched  lips,  his  hawk  with  sudden 
sweep  of  wings  dashed  it  from  his  hand,  and  then, 
with  a  strange,  anxious  call,  flew  along  the  bank 
of  the  stream  toward  its  source.  The  nobleman, 
no  little  annoyed,  again  essayed  to  drink;  but  the 
bird  the  second  time  upset  the  cup,  and  fluttered 
and  called  along  up  the  mountain  side  the  same 
as  before.  A  third  time  the  cup  was  lifted,  and 
a  third  time  its  coveted  contents  were  spilled.  The 
hunter,  tired  and  thirsty,  his  patience  gone,  with 


156  DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL? 

quick  resentment  struck  his  bird  a  fatal  blow. 
Then,  as  he  looked  on  his  favorite,  dead  at  his 
feet,  it  occurred  to  him  to  follow  up  the  stream, 
for  the  strange  conduct  of  the  bird  and  his  strange 
call  had  at  last  impressed  him.  In  the  spring,  at 
the  very  fountain  head,  he  found,  to  his  utter 
horror,  the  half-decayed  carcass  of  a  huge  serpent, 
and  it  flashed  upon  him  that  it  was  deadly  poison 
he  had  been  lifting  to  his  lips,  that  the  faithful 
bird  had  saved  his  master's  life,  and  that  this  same 
master  in  a  fit  of  blind  passion  had  ruthlessly 
destroyed  his.  Full  of  remorse,  he  dug  a  grave, 
laid  the  bird  tenderly  in  it,  and  afterward,  to 
mark  the  spot  and  tell  of  his  gratitude  and  his 
grief,  he  raised  a  marble  shaft  above  this  his  hum- 
ble benefactor.  Is  there  not  a  lesson  here  for  us.^* 
When  we  are  baffled  and  beaten  back  in  some  of 
our  cherished  pui'poses,  when  the  cups  of  spark- 
ling pleasure  which  we  are  eagerly  raising  to  our 
parched  lips  are  dashed  from  us,  let  us  not  in  our 
haste  conclude  that  our  prayers  are  unblessed,  that 
God  has  either  turned  away  in  deaf  indifference 
and  left  us  to  our  fate,  or  become  our  covert  foe. 
The  seemingly  hostile  forces  may  be  the  very 
angels  of  his  kindest  providence,  commissioned  to 
smite  from  our  lips  by  the  beating  of  their  strong 
pinions  sparkling  drafts  which  have  come  from 
poisoned  springs. 

With  these  explanations  I  reaffirm  with  added 
emphasis  that  every  reasonable  prayer  offered  in 
a  right  spirit  is  certain  of  favorable  answer.     To 


DOES  PRAYER  AVAIL?  157 

this,  as  we  have  seen,  science  can  urge  no  valid 
objection.  It  is  in  consonance  with  the  soundest 
philosophy;  it  is  in  fulfillment  of  Divine  promise, 
it  responds  to  the  deepest  intuitions  of  human 
hearts. 

The  first  effect  of  modem  scientific  inquiry  has 
been  to  weaken  faith,  and  make  God  seem  simply 
an  impersonal,  great  First  Cause,  rather  than  a 
present  loving  Father,  and  ourselves  but  processes 
in  a  vast  evolution,  parts  in  an  unchangeable  order, 
wheels  and  pinions,  merely,  in  a  mechanism  whose 
movements  reach  from  motes  to  sun-clusters.  A 
reaction  from  this  paralyzing  scepticism  has  al- 
ready set  in.  A  faith  fervent  as  that  felt  before 
science  had  birth,  seems  destined  again  to  prevail, 
and  to  be  the  outcome  of  this  very  spirit  of  inquiry 
which  for  the  past  few  decades  has  threatened 
to  relegate  it  forever  to  the  limbo  of  the  world's 
outgrown  and  discarded  thought.  Reappearing 
this  time  as  the  ripe  result  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury's tireless  and  fearless  research  into  time's 
deepest  mysteries,  I  cannot  see  how  ever  again  it 
can  lose  its  hold  on  the  hearts  of  men. 


Date  Due 

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